A novel algorithm to form stable clusters in vehicular ad hoc networks on highways

Abstract Clustering in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) is one of the control schemes used to make VANET global topology less dynamic. Many of the VANET clustering algorithms are derived from mobile ad hoc networks (MANET). However, VANET nodes are characterized by their high mobility, and the existence of VANET nodes in the same geographic proximity does not mean that they exhibit the same mobility patterns. Therefore, VANET clustering schemes should take into consideration the degree of the speed difference among neighboring nodes to produce relatively stable clustering structure. In this paper, we introduce a new clustering technique suitable for the VANET environment on highways with the aim of enhancing the stability of the network topology. This technique takes the speed difference as a parameter to create relatively stable cluster structure. We also developed a new multi-metric algorithm for cluster-head elections. A simulation was conducted to evaluate our method and compare it with the most commonly used clustering methods. The simulation results show that our technique provides more stable cluster structure on the locale scale which results in a more stable network structure on the global scale. The proposed technique reduces the average number of clusters changed per vehicle by 34-46%, and increases the average cluster lifetime by 20-48% compared to the existing techniques

Mobility Adaptive Density Connected Clustering Approach in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Clustering is one of the popular topology management approaches that can positively influence the performance of networks. It plays significant role in VANETs. However, VANETs having highly mobile nodes lead to dynamic topology and hence, it is very difficult to construct stable clusters. More homogeneous environment produces more stable clusters. Homogeneous neighbourhood for a vehicle is strongly driven by density and standard deviation of average relative velocity of vehicles in its communication range. So, we propose Mobility Adaptive Density Connected Clustering Algorithm (MADCCA), a density based clustering algorithm. The Cluster Heads (CHs) are selected based on the standard deviation of average relative velocity and density matrices in their neighbourhood. Vehicle, which is having more homogeneous environments, will become the cluster heads and rest of the vehicles in their communication range will be the Cluster Members (CMs). The simulation results demonstrates the better performance of MADCCA over other clustering algorithms new ALM and MOBIC

Enhanced Load Balanced Clustering Technique for VANET Using Location Aware Genetic Algorithm

The vehicular Adhoc Network has unique charac-teristics of frequent topology changes, traffic rule-based node movement, and speculative travel pattern. It leads to stochastic unstable nature in forming clusters. The re-liable routing process and load balancing are essential to improve the network lifetime. Cluster formation is used to split the network topology into small structures. The reduced size network leads to accumulating the topology information quickly. Due to the absence of centralised management, there is a pitfall in network topology man-agement and optimal resource allocation, resulting in ineffective routing. Hence, it is necessary to develop an effective clustering algorithm for VANET. In this paper, the Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Dynamic Programming (DP) are used in designing load-balanced clusters. The proposed Angular Zone Augmented Elitism-Based Im-migrants GA (AZEIGA) used elitism-based immigrants GA to deal with the population and DP to store the out-come of old environments. AZEIGA ensures clustering of load-balanced nodes, which prolongs the network lifetime. Experimental results show that AZEIGA works appreciably well in homogeneous resource class VANET. The simulation proves that AZEIGA gave better perfor-mance in packet delivery, network lifetime, average de-lay, routing, and clustering overhead

Efficient Information Dissemination in Vehicular Networks with Privacy Protection

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a key component of intelligent transportation System (ITS). In VANETs, vehicles and roadside units exchange information for the purpose of navigation, safe driving, entertainment and so on. The high mobility of vehicles makes efficient and private communications in VANETs a big challenge. Improving the performance of information dissemination while protecting data privacy is studied in this research. Meet-Table based information dissemination method is first proposed, so as to improve the information dissemination, and to efficiently distribute information via utilizing roadside units, Cloud Computing, and Fog Computing. A clustering algorithm is proposed as well, to improve the stability for self-organized cluster-based dissemination in VANETs on highways. Then, fuzzy neural networks are used to improve the stability and security of routing protocols, AODV, and design a novel protocol, GSS-AODV. To further protect data privacy, a multi-antenna based information protection approach for vehicle-to-vehicle(V2V) communications is also proposed

Using Hybrid Angle/Distance Information for Distributed Topology Control in Vehicular Sensor Networks

In a vehicular sensor network (VSN), the key design issue is how to organize vehicles effectively, such that the local network topology can be stabilized quickly. In this work, each vehicle with on-board sensors can be considered as a local controller associated with a group of communication members. In order to balance the load among the nodes and govern the local topology change, a group formation scheme using localized criteria is implemented. The proposed distributed topology control method focuses on reducing the rate of group member change and avoiding the unnecessary information exchange. Two major phases are sequentially applied to choose the group members of each vehicle using hybrid angle/distance information. The operation of Phase I is based on the concept of the cone-based method, which can select the desired vehicles quickly. Afterwards, the proposed time-slot method is further applied to stabilize the network topology. Given the network structure in Phase I, a routing scheme is presented in Phase II. The network behaviors are explored through simulation and analysis in a variety of scenarios. The results show that the proposed mechanism is a scalable and effective control framework for VSNs

A Framework for Incident Detection and notification in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

The US Department of Transportation (US-DOT) estimates that over half of all congestion events are caused by highway incidents rather than by rush-hour traffic in big cities. The US-DOT also notes that in a single year, congested highways due to traffic incidents cost over $75 billion in lost worker productivity and over 8.4 billion gallons of fuel. Further, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) indicates that congested roads are one of the leading causes of traffic accidents, and in 2005 an average of 119 persons died each day in motor vehicle accidents. Recently, Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANET) employing a combination of Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) wireless communication have been proposed to alert drivers to traffic events including accidents, lane closures, slowdowns, and other traffic-safety issues. In this thesis, we propose a novel framework for incident detection and notification dissemination in VANETs. This framework consists of three main components: a system architecture, a traffic incident detection engine and a notification dissemination mechanism. The basic idea of our framework is to collect and aggregate traffic-related data from passing cars and to use the aggregated information to detect traffic anomalies. Finally, the suitably filtered aggregated information is disseminated to alert drivers about traffic delays and incidents. The first contribution of this thesis is an architecture for the notification of traffic incidents, NOTICE for short. In NOTICE, sensor belts are embedded in the road at regular intervals, every mile or so. Each belt consists of a collection of pressure sensors, a simple aggregation and fusion engine, and a few small transceivers. The pressure sensors in each belt allow every message to be associated with a physical vehicle passing over that belt. Thus, no one vehicle can pretend to be multiple vehicles and then, is no need for an ID to be assigned to vehicles. Vehicles in NOTICE are fitted with a tamper-resistant Event Data Recorder (EDR), very much like the well-known black-boxes onboard commercial aircraft. EDRs are responsible for storing vehicles behavior between belts such as acceleration, deceleration and lane changes. Importantly, drivers can provide input to the EDR, using a simple menu, either through a dashboard console or through verbal input. The second contribution of this thesis is to develop incident detection techniques that use the information provided by cars in detecting possible incidents and traffic anomalies using intelligent inference techniques. For this purpose, we developed deterministic and probabilistic techniques to detect both blocking incidents, accidents for examples, as well as non-blocking ones such as potholes. To the best of our knowledge, our probabilistic technique is the first VANET based automatic incident detection technique that is capable of detecting both blocking and non blocking incidents. Our third contribution is to provide an analysis for vehicular traffic proving that VANETs tend to be disconnected in many highway scenarios, consisting of a collection of disjoint clusters. We also provide an analytical way to compute the expected cluster size and we show that clusters are quite stable over time. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first in the VANET community to prove analytically that disconnection is the norm rather than the exceptions in VANETs. Our fourth contribution is to develop data dissemination techniques specifically adapted to VANETs. With VANETs disconnection in mind, we developed data dissemination approaches that efficiently propagate messages between cars and belts on the road. We proposed two data dissemination techniques, one for divided roads and another one for undivided roads. We also proposed a probabilistic technique used by belts to determine how far should an incident notification be sent to alert approaching drivers. Our fifth contribution is to propose a security technique to avoid possible attacks from malicious drivers as well as preserving driver\u27s privacy in data dissemination and notification delivery in NOTICE. We also proposed a belt clustering scheme to reduce the probability of having a black-hole in the message dissemination while reducing also the operational burden if a belt is compromised