MQ-Mapcast: A Map-Aware Protocol for Optimized Forwarding in Urban VANETs

Vehicular Adhoc Networks will significantly rely on message forwarding based on position. This requires scalable, efficient and effective solutions, so as to support a large number of nodes and timely deliver safety-warning messages. This paper presents and studies a protocol (MQ-Mapcast) for message forwarding, which leverages both node position and urban topological information so as to prevent potential broadcast storms. Based on a previous version of the protocol, MQ-Mapcast can support multiple concurrent traffic flows and background traffic, by means of a flexible queuing architecture. Simulations, in a realistic urban environment and in presence of urban obstructions, show that our scheme significantly outperforms classic geocasting of safety messages, in terms of packet delivery ratio, latency and channel usage.