A hybrid data dissemination scheme for VANETs

Data dissemination in Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) is a key research area with applications that range from traffic flow information to weather reports and related information. Delivering this data with maximum efficiency to a wide area is the focus of research in data dissemination protocols. Data propagation methods preferred for these specialized ad hoc networks fall under two mutually exclusive categories namely store-and-forward and multi-hop broadcasts. Neither of these two categories is noticeably superior and each has its strengths and weaknesses which we outline in this paper. We propose a novel hybrid data dissemination scheme that capitalizes on the strengths of both these categories and mitigates the weaknesses by combining store-and-forward and multi-hop broadcasts. We simulate the proposed hybrid scheme on the JiST/SWANS simulator and evaluate its behavior and performance against pure store-and-forward and pure multi-hop broadcasts by varying the aggregation ratio, number of nodes, and broadcast zone radius.