Distributed Robust Geocast Multicast Routing for Inter-Vehicle Communication

TL;DR

This paper introduces a distributed, robust geocast multicast routing protocol for inter-vehicle communication that effectively handles frequent topology changes and network fragmentation, reducing overhead and redundancy.

Contribution

It proposes a novel distributed geocast routing protocol with a distance-based backoff and redundancy reduction mechanisms tailored for VANETs.

Findings

Outperforms simple flooding in various scenarios.

Reduces routing overhead compared to explicit route setup.

Enhances robustness against network fragmentation.

Abstract

Numerous protocols for geocast have been proposed in literature. It has been shown that explicit route setup approaches perform poorly with VANETs due to limited route lifetime and frequent network fragmentation. The broadcast based approaches have considerable redundancy and add significantly to the overhead of the protocol. A completely distributed and robust geocast approach is presented in this paper, that is resilient to frequent topology changes and network fragmentation. A distance-based backoff algorithm is used to reduce the number of hops and a novel mechanism to reduce redundant broadcasts is introduced. The performance of the proposed protocol is evaluated for various scenarios and compared with simple flooding and a protocol based on explicit route setup.