A stable clustering algorithm for efficiency applications in VANETs

Efficiency applications in VANETs are focused on increasing the productivity of the road resources by managing the traffic flow and monitoring the road conditions. The performance of most such applications is dependent on an effective density estimation of the vehicles in the surroundings. Of the various methods, clustering demonstrates to be an effective concept to implement this. However due to high mobility a stable cluster, within a vehicular framework, is difficult to implement. In this work, we propose a direction based clustering algorithm with a clusterhead switching mechanism. This mechanism is aimed to overcome the influence of overtaking within the clusters. The proposed algorithm facilitates to attain better stability and thus accurate density estimation within the clusters. Simulation results show that the proposed clustering algorithm is rendered stability through switching mechanism and hence provides a better accuracy in density estimation.