Reliable and efficient broadcast procedure for Vehicular - Ad Hoc Neworks

As most of the envisioned services in vehicular networks need to broadcast the messages to all vehicles within a certain area of interest, a reliable and efficient broadcast procedure is essential for the Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET). The broadcasting should ensure a minimum number of transmissions and guaranteed delivery. In the proposed work, the local information of the surrounding vehicles is made use of to construct a Connected Dominating Set (CDS). CDS acts as a virtual backbone to the corresponding vehicular network. Vehicles in the CDS actively take part in message broadcast and the message indeed reach the whole network. As the total number of nodes which needs to forward the message is reduced, the number of retransmissions is reduced and the network traffic is minimized. Acknowledgements from neighbors include the message identifier which eliminates forwarding the messages to the same vehicles which have already received the message. On the expiry of a predefined time, the source retransmits the message making the protocol reliable. The proposed method does not depend on any parameter to broadcast the message. The approach does not take into account the varying mobility regimes and is suitable for most traffic scenarios. In simulation based approaches, the method provides high reliability and efficiency than many competing broadcasting algorithms.