Optimal next hop selection for VANET routing

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) applications become increasingly popular. Particular characteristics of VANETs profoundly impede the deployment of the VANET applications. Therefore, the merits of routing significantly affect the accomplishments of the VANETs. Though myriads of efforts have been made, the problems are partially solved. Quality of Service (QoS) requirements should be satisfied for various applications. Existing routing protocols are incapable of well satisfying distinct QoS needs. To remedy this problem, a next-hop selection scheme is proposed in this paper; which is able to select the next-hop node for various applications with diverse QoS requirements. Aspects including QoS type classification, link lifetime prediction, bandwidth evaluation, and next-hop node selection; are elaborately addressed in the proposed scheme. The simulation results show that the proposed next-hop selection scheme promotes packet delivery rate, shortens end-to-end delay, and decreases signaling overhead in VANETs.