An effective routing protocol for intermittently connected vehicular ad hoc networks

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is suffering from intermittent connectivity problems due to vehicles mobility, which challenge routing protocols. To address the issue, we propose a novel strategy called Reactive Pseudo-suboptimal-path Selection routing protocol (RPS). It is different from existing solutions which rely on vehicles physical movement to carry packets in intermittent connectivity scenarios. RPS gives the recently passed intersection a chance to select a new path from suboptimal-path unilaterally determined by local knowledge. Thus it improves the probability of transmission through wireless channels. A comparison between RPS and current protocols is presented and results show that the proposed RPS has higher packet delivery ratio and lower end-to-end delay.