A connectivity-aware intersection-based routing in VANETs

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are going to be an important communication infrastructure in our moving life. The design of routing protocols in VANETs is a significant and necessary issue for supporting VANET-based applications. However, due to high mobility, frequent link disconnection, and uneven distribution of vehicles, it becomes quite challenging to establish a robust route for delivering packets. This paper presents a connectivity-aware intersection-based routing (CAIR) protocol to address these problems by selecting an optimal route with higher probability of connectivity and lower experienced delay; then, geographical forwarding based on position prediction is used to transfer packets between any two intersections along the route. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol outperforms existing routing protocols in terms of data delivery ratio and average transmission delay in typical urban scenarios.