Connectivity-Aware Routing (CAR) in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks

Vehicular ad hoc networks using WLAN technology have recently received considerable attention. We present a position-based routing scheme called Connectivity-Aware Routing (CAR) designed specifically for inter-vehicle communication in a city and/or highway environment. A distinguishing property of CAR is the ability to not only locate positions of destinations but also to find connected paths between source and destination pairs. These paths are auto-adjusted on the fly, without a new discovery process. "Guards" help to track the current position of a destination, even if it traveled a substantial distance from its initially known location. For the evaluation of the CAR protocol we use realistic mobility traces obtained from a microscopic vehicular traffic simulator that is based on a model of driver behavior and the real road maps of Switzerland.