Cooperative game based relay vehicle selection algorithm for VANETs

As a special type of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are expected to support vehicle to vehicle communication and vehicle to infrastructure communication. The conventional relay selection scheme proposed for MANETs may perform poorly in VANETs due to the unique characteristics of VANETs, including highly dynamic network topology, unstable link status and multiple types of services with various QoS requirements. In the paper, a relay vehicle selection algorithm is proposed for a VANET with multiple source vehicles (SVs) and relay vehicles (RVs). Stressing the cooperation and competitive relationship among SVs and RVs in relay selection, a cooperative Game model is formulated. To achieve the maximization of joint payoff functions of all the SVs and RVs, modified Kuhn-Munkres algorithm is applied and the optimal relay vehicle selection is obtained. Numerical results demonstrate that compared with previous scheme, the proposed scheme offers better performance in terms of throughput, successful transmission rate and transmission delay.