Road-Aware Routing Strategies for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks: Characteristics and Comparisons

The tremendous advancement in new wireless technologies has led to a renewed interest in vehicular ad hoc networks. However, due to the high mobility and dynamic nature of vehicular networks, great challenges exist for data delivery. In order to design efficient and smart routing strategies for stable communication, several different types of routing protocols have been integrated. One efficient type is the road-aware routing protocol which is based on road statistics (e.g., traffic density, intersections, and road segments). The main objective of the survey conducted in this paper is to discuss the recent road-aware routing protocols and categorize them according to different aspects. In addition, this review investigates the protocols in terms of their forwarding processes, routing metrics, recovery mechanisms, and performance. Moreover, routing challenges and comparisons are discussed.