Design and analysis of a beacon-less routing protocol for large volume content dissemination in vehicular ad hoc networks

Largevolumecontentdisseminationispursuedbythegrowingnumberofhighquality applications for Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks(VANETs), e.g., the live road surveillance service and the video-based overtaking assistant service. For the highly dynamical vehicular network topology, beacon-less routing protocols have been proven to be efficient in achieving a balance between the system performance and the control overhead. However, to the authors’ best knowledge, the routing design for large volume content has not been well considered in the previous work, which will introduce new challenges, e.g., the enhanced connectivity requirement for a radio link. In this paper, a link Lifetime-aware Beacon-less Routing Protocol (LBRP) is designed for large volume content delivery in VANETs. Each vehicle makes the forwarding decision based on the message header information and its current state, including the speed and position information. A semi-Markov process analytical model is proposed to evaluate the expected delay in constructing one routing path for LBRP. Simulations show that the proposed LBRP scheme outperforms the traditional dissemination protocols in providing a low end-to-end delay. The analytical model is shown to exhibit a good match on the delay estimation with Monte Carlo simulations, as well

A Comparative Survey of VANET Clustering Techniques

© 2016 Crown. A vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a mobile ad hoc network in which network nodes are vehicles - most commonly road vehicles. VANETs present a unique range of challenges and opportunities for routing protocols due to the semi-organized nature of vehicular movements subject to the constraints of road geometry and rules, and the obstacles which limit physical connectivity in urban environments. In particular, the problems of routing protocol reliability and scalability across large urban VANETs are currently the subject of intense research. Clustering can be used to improve routing scalability and reliability in VANETs, as it results in the distributed formation of hierarchical network structures by grouping vehicles together based on correlated spatial distribution and relative velocity. In addition to the benefits to routing, these groups can serve as the foundation for accident or congestion detection, information dissemination and entertainment applications. This paper explores the design choices made in the development of clustering algorithms targeted at VANETs. It presents a taxonomy of the techniques applied to solve the problems of cluster head election, cluster affiliation, and cluster management, and identifies new directions and recent trends in the design of these algorithms. Additionally, methodologies for validating clustering performance are reviewed, and a key shortcoming - the lack of realistic vehicular channel modeling - is identified. The importance of a rigorous and standardized performance evaluation regime utilizing realistic vehicular channel models is demonstrated

SIMULATION AND ANALYSIS OF VEHICULAR AD-HOC NETWORKS IN URBAN AND RURAL AREAS

According to the American National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 2010, there were an estimated 5,419,000 police-reported traffic crashes, in which 32,885 people were killed and 2,239,000 people were injured in the US alone. Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET) is an emerging technology which promises to decrease car accidents by providing several safety related services such as blind spot, forward collision and sudden braking ahead warnings. Unfortunately, research of VANET is hindered by the extremely high cost and complexity of field testing. Hence it becomes important to simulate VANET protocols and applications thoroughly before attempting to implement them. This thesis studies the feasibility of common mobility and wireless channel models in VANET simulation and provides a general overview of the currently available VANET simulators and their features. Six different simulation scenarios are performed to evaluate the performance of AODV, DSDV, DSR and OLSR Ad-Hoc routing protocols with UDP and TCP packets. Simulation results indicate that reactive protocols are more robust and suitable for the highly dynamic VANET networks. Furthermore, TCP is found to be more suitable for VANET safety applications due to the high delay and packet drop of UDP packets.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Enhanced stability of cluster-based location service mechanism for urban vehicular ad hoc networks

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) are gaining tremendous research interest in developing an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) for smart cities. The position of vehicles plays a significant role in ITS applications and services such as public emergency, vehicles tracking, resource discovery, traffic monitoring and position-based routing. The location service is used to keep up-to-date records of current positions of vehicles. A review of previous literatures, found various locationbased service mechanisms have been proposed to manage the position of vehicles. The cluster-based location service mechanisms have achieved growing attention due to their advantages such as scalability, reliability and reduced communication overhead. However, the performance of the cluster-based location service mechanism depends on the stability of the cluster, and the stability of the cluster depends on the stability of the Cluster Head (CH), Cluster Member (CM) and cluster maintenance. In the existing cluster-based location service schemes, the issue of CH instability arises due to the non-optimal cluster formation range and unreliable communication link with Road Side Unit (RSU). The non-optimal cluster formation range causes CH instability due to lack of uniqueness of Centroid Vehicle (CV), uncertainty of participating vehicles in the CH election process and unreliability of the Cluster Head Election Value (CHEV). Also, the unreliable link with RSU does not guarantee that CH is stable with respect to its CMs and RSU simultaneously. The issue of CM instability in the existing cluster-based location service schemes occurs due to using instantaneous speed of the CH and fixed CM affiliation threshold values. The instantaneous speed causes the CM to switch the clusters frequently and fixed CM affiliation threshold values increase isolated vehicles. The frequent switching of isolated vehicles augment the CM instability. Moreover, the inefficient cluster maintenance due to non-optimal cluster merging and cluster splitting also contributes to cluster instability. The merging conditions such as fixed merging threshold time and uncertain movement of overlapping CHs within merging threshold time cause the cluster instability. Furthermore, the unnecessary clustering during cluster splitting around the intersection due to CH election parameters also increases cluster instability. Therefore, to address the aforementioned cluster instability issues, Enhanced Stability of Cluster-based Location Service (ESCLS) mechanism was proposed for urban VANETs. The proposed ESCLS mechanism consists of three complementary schemes which are Reliable Cluster Head Election (RCHE), Dynamic Cumulative Cluster Member Affiliation (DCCMA) and Optimized Cluster Maintenance (OCM). Firstly, the aim of the RCHE scheme was to enhance the stability of the CH through optimizing the cluster formation range and by considering communication link reliability with the RSU. Secondly, the DCCMA scheme focussed on improving the stability of the CMs by considering the Cumulative Moving Average Speed (CMAS) of the CH and dynamic CM affiliation threshold values, and finally, the OCM scheme enhanced the cluster stability by improving cluster merging conditions and reducing unnecessary clustering in cluster splitting. The results of the simulation verified the improved performance of the ESCLS in terms of increasing the location query success rate by 34%, and decreasing the query response delay and localization error by 24% and 35% respectively as compared to the existing cluster-based location service schemes such as HCBLS, CBLS and MoGLS. In conclusion, it is proven that ESCLS is a suitable location service mechanism for a wide range of position-based applications of VANETs that require timely and accurate vehicle locations

Fuzzy-Based Distributed Protocol for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication

This paper modeled the multihop data-routing in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks(VANET) as Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) in four steps. First, the criteria which have an impact on the performance of the network layer are captured and transformed into fuzzy sets. Second, the fuzzy sets are characterized by Fuzzy Membership Functions(FMF) which are interpolated based on the data collected from massive experimental simulations. Third, the Analytical Hierarchy Process(AHP) is exploited to identify the relationships among the criteria. Fourth, multiple fuzzy rules are determined and, the TSK inference system is employed to infer and aggregate the final forwarding decision. Through integrating techniques of MCDM, FMF, AHP, and TSK, we designed a distributed and opportunistic data routing protocol, namely, VEFR (Vehicular Environment Fuzzy Router) which targets V2V (vehicle-to-vehicle) communication and runs in two main processes, Road Segment Selection(RSS) and Relay Vehicle Selection(RVS). RSS is intended to select multiple successive junctions through which the packets should travel from the source to the destination, while RVS process is intended to select relay vehicles within the selected road segment. The experimental results showed that our protocol performs and scales well with both network size and density, considering the combined problem of end-to-end packet delivery ratio and end-to-end latency

Spectrum and transmission range aware clustering for cognitive radio ad hoc networks

Cognitive radio network (CRN) is a promising technology to overcome the problem of spectrum shortage by enabling the unlicensed users to access the underutilization spectrum bands in an opportunistic manner. On the other hand, the hardness of establishing a fixed infrastructure in specific situations such as disaster recovery, and battlefield communication imposes the network to have an ad hoc structure. Thus, the emerging of Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Network (CRAHN) has accordingly become imperative. However, the practical implementation of CRAHN faced many challenges such as control channel establishment and the scalability problems. Clustering that divides the network into virtual groups is a reliable solution to handle these issues. However, previous clustering methods for CRAHNs seem to be impractical due to issues regarding the high number of constructed clusters and unfair load distribution among the clusters. Additionally, the homogeneous channel model was considered in the previous work despite channel heterogeneity is the CRN features. This thesis addressed these issues by proposing two clustering schemes, where the heterogeneous channel is considered in the clustering process. First, a distributed clustering algorithm called Spectrum and Transmission Range Aware Clustering (STRAC) which exploits the heterogeneous channel concept is proposed. Here, a novel cluster head selection function is formulated. An analytical model is derived to validate the STRAC outcomes. Second, in order to improve the bandwidth utilization, a Load Balanced Spectrum and Transmission Range Aware Clustering (LB-STRAC) is proposed. This algorithm jointly considers the channel heterogeneity and load balancing concepts. Simulation results show that on average, STRAC reduces the number of constructed clusters up to 51% compared to conventional clustering technique, Spectrum Opportunity based Clustering (SOC). In addition, STRAC significantly reduces the one-member cluster ratio and re-affiliation ratio in comparison to non-heterogeneity channel consideration schemes. LB-STRAC further improved the clustering performance by outperforming STRAC in terms of uniformity and equality of the traffic load distribution among all clusters with fair spectrum allocation. Moreover, LB-STRAC has been shown to be very effective in improving the bandwidth utilization. For equal traffic load scenario, LB-STRAC on average improves the bandwidth utilization by 24.3% compared to STRAC. Additionally, for varied traffic load scenario, LB-STRAC improves the bandwidth utilization by 31.9% and 25.4% on average compared with STRAC for non-uniform slot allocation and for uniform slot allocation respectively. Thus, LB-STRAC is highly recommended for multi-source scenarios such as continuous monitoring applications or situation awareness applications

An overview of emergency communication networks

In recent years, major natural disasters and public safety accidents have frequently occurred worldwide. In order to deal with various disasters and accidents using rapidly deployable, reliable, efficient, and stable emergency communication networks, all countries in the world are strengthening and improving emergency communication network construction and related technology research. Motivated by these situations, in this paper, we provide a state-of-the-art survey of the current situation and development of emergency communication networks. In this detailed investigation, our primary focus is the extensive discussion of emergency communication network technology, including satellite networks, ad hoc networks, cellular networks, and wireless private networks. Then, we explore and analyze the networks currently applied in emergency rescue, such as the 370M narrowband private network, broadband cluster network, and 5G constellation plan. We propose a broadband-narrowband integrated emergency communication network to provide an effective solution for visual dispatch of emergency rescue services. The main findings derived from the comprehensive survey on the emergency communication network are then summarized, and possible research challenges are noted. Lastly, we complete this survey by shedding new light on future directions for the emergency communication network. In the future, the emergency network will develop in the direction of intelligence, integration, popularization, and lower cost, and space-air-ground-sea integrated networks. This survey provides a reference basis for the construction of networks to mitigate major natural disasters and public safety accidents

Communication and Control in Collaborative UAVs: Recent Advances and Future Trends

The recent progress in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) technology has significantly advanced UAV-based applications for military, civil, and commercial domains. Nevertheless, the challenges of establishing high-speed communication links, flexible control strategies, and developing efficient collaborative decision-making algorithms for a swarm of UAVs limit their autonomy, robustness, and reliability. Thus, a growing focus has been witnessed on collaborative communication to allow a swarm of UAVs to coordinate and communicate autonomously for the cooperative completion of tasks in a short time with improved efficiency and reliability. This work presents a comprehensive review of collaborative communication in a multi-UAV system. We thoroughly discuss the characteristics of intelligent UAVs and their communication and control requirements for autonomous collaboration and coordination. Moreover, we review various UAV collaboration tasks, summarize the applications of UAV swarm networks for dense urban environments and present the use case scenarios to highlight the current developments of UAV-based applications in various domains. Finally, we identify several exciting future research direction that needs attention for advancing the research in collaborative UAVs