QoS‐aware broadcasting in VANETs based on fuzzy logic and enhanced kinetic multipoint relay

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are emergent concepts in terms of infrastructure‐less communication. The data dissemination is usually done using broadcast schemes. Data broadcast in VANETs is a challenging issue due to the high mobility vehicles and the varying density. On one hand, these vehicles have to share and disseminate the safety‐critical information, in real time, to other intended vehicles. On the other hand, the existing broadcast solutions do not succeed, till now, to fulfill VANETs requirements especially in terms of performance and QoS. In this paper, we propose a new QoS‐aware broadcast method in order to face VANETs communications challenges. We choose to adapt a concept originally devoted to mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and join it to other specific VANET techniques to introduce a new broadcasting protocol in the aim of optimizing QoS fulfilment. The proposed solution is fundamentally based on enhanced kinetic strategy assisted with fuzzy logic for QoS‐aware multipoint relay (MPR). The protocol efficiency is eventually tested through an experimental study and compared with existing methods. The results prove the over‐performance of the proposed solution.     

An adjusted K‐medoids clustering algorithm for effective stability in vehicular ad hoc networks

Recently, the routing problem in vehicular ad hoc networks is one of the most vital research. Despite the variety of the proposed approaches and the development of communications technologies, the routing problem in VANET suffers from the high speed of vehicles and the repetitive failures in communications. In this paper, we adjusted the well‐known K‐medoids clustering algorithm to improve the network stability and to increase the lifetime of all established links. First, the number of clusters and the initial cluster heads will not be selected randomly as usual, but based on mathematical formula considering the environment size and the available transmission ranges. Then the assignment of nodes to clusters in both k‐medoids phases will be carried out according to several metrics including direction, relative speed, and proximity. To the best of our knowledge, our proposed model is the first that introduces the new metric named “node disconnection frequency.” This metric prevents nodes with volatile and suspicious behavior to be elected as a new CH. This screening ensures that the new CH retains its property as long as possible and thus increases the network stability. Empirical results confirm that in addition to the convergence speed that characterizes our adjusted K‐medoids clustering algorithm (AKCA), the proposed model achieves more stability and robustness when compared with most recent approaches designed for the same objective.     

About Deterministic and non‐Deterministic Vehicular Communications over DSRC/802.11p

In this work, we introduce a priority‐aware deterministic access protocol called Vehicular Deterministic Access (VDA). VDA is based on 802.11p/DSRC and allows vehicles to access the shared medium in collision‐free periods. Particularly, VDA supports two types of safety services (emergency and routine safety messages) with different priorities and strict requirements on delay. To avoid long delays and high packet collisions, VDA allows vehicles to access the wireless medium at selected times with a lower contention than would otherwise be possible within a two‐hop neighborhood by the classical 802.11p Enhanced Distributed Channel Access or Distributed Coordination Function schemes. A non‐VDA‐enabled vehicle, that is, a vehicle not configured with the optional VDA capability over 802.11p, may start transmitting on the shared channel just before or during the VDA opportunities reserved for vehicles with VDA capabilities. To avoid the aforementioned issues and prevent interfering transmissions from VDA‐enabled vehicles and non‐VDA‐enabled vehicles, we also proposed a novel scheme called extended VDA. We analyzed the impact of several design tradeoffs between the contention free period/contention period dwell time ratios on the performance of safety applications with different priorities for VDA and extended VDA. Simulations show that the proposed schemes clearly outperform the backoff‐based schemes currently used by 802.11p in high communication density conditions while bounding the transmission delay of safety messages and increasing the packet reception rate. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An intelligent hybrid prairie dog optimization algorithm-based stable cluster reliable routing scheme for VANETs

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is most significant for supporting intelligent transportation system (ITS)-based technologies, but it gets hurdled by sparse distribution of vehicles on highways, and dynamically challenging topology that arises due to increase in traffic. Hence, energy stable and optimized cluster construction maximizes the network lifetime. In this paper, Hybrid Prairie Dogs and Beluga Whale Optimization-based Node Clustering (HPDBWOA-NC) mechanism is proposed with the parameters of highway route, node velocity, number of vehicular nodes, and communication for achieving stable cluster construction in VANETs. It is proposed with the balanced exploration and exploitation potential of Prairie Dog Optimization Algorithm (PDOA) and Beluga Whale Optimization Algorithm (BWOA) for establishing optimal clusters that increase the network stability during the routing process. It integrated the exploration and exploitation capabilities of PDOA and BWOA and confirmed better optimized clusters which confirmed reliable data delivery by preventing the issue of premature convergence. It constructed clusters and selected cluster heads (CHs) depending on the fitness factors of energy, interdistance between vehicles, communication range, and vehicular density. The results of the proposed HPDBWOA-NC generated optimal number of CHs in the network which is comparatively 34.21% better than the benchmarked mechanisms. The mean throughput and packet delivery ratio (PDR) achieved by the proposed HPDBWOA-NC are identified to be significantly improved by 25.48% and 28.91% better than the investigated metaheuristic clustering protocols. The statistical study also guaranteed an increased factor of 81, during the processing of optimizing the clusters during the employment of ITS applications in VANETs.     

Privacy‐preserving authentication protocols with efficient verification in VANETs

As an important component of intelligent transportation systems, vehicular ad hoc networks can provide safer and more comfortable driving circumstance for the drivers. However, communication security and privacy issues present practical concerns to the deployment of vehicular ad hoc networks. Although recent related studies have already addressed most of these issues, most of them have only considered a posteriori countermeasures or a priori countermeasures to prevent the attacks of an adversary. To the best of our knowledge, up to now, only two privacy‐preserving authentication schemes can provide a posteriori countermeasures and a priori countermeasures. But, the computational cost of verifying a signature is relatively high or security proof of the scheme is loose in the two schemes. In this paper, we propose two novel privacy‐preserving authentication schemes. The first one cannot only provide a posteriori and a priori countermeasures, but also has low computational cost in the verification phase and tight security proof. The second one can achieve batch verification on multiple messages. Comparison with Wu et al.'s scheme and Chen et al's scheme, our scheme shows higher efficiency in terms of the computational cost of verifying signature.Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A roadside unit‐based localization scheme for vehicular ad hoc networks

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs), designed to ensure the safety and comfort of passengers via the exchange of information amongst nearby vehicles or between the vehicles and Roadside Units (RSUs), have attracted particular attention. However, the success of many VANET applications depends on their ability to estimate the vehicle position with a high degree of precision, and thus, many vehicle localization schemes have been proposed. Many of these schemes are based on vehicle‐mounted Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers. However, the GPS signals are easily disturbed or obstructed. Although this problem can be resolved by vehicle‐to‐vehicle communication schemes, such schemes are effective only in VANETs with a high traffic density. Accordingly, this paper presents a VANET localization scheme in which each vehicle estimates its location on the basis of beacon messages broadcast periodically by pairs of RSUs deployed on either side of the road. In addition, three enhancements to the proposed scheme are presented for the RSU deployment, RSU beacon collisions, and RSU failures. Overall, the ns‐2 simulation results show that the localization scheme achieves a lower localization error than existing solutions on the basis of vehicle‐to‐vehicle communications and is robust toward changes in the traffic density and the vehicle speed. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hybrid seagull and thermal exchange optimization algorithm‐based NLOS nodes detection technique for enhancing reliability under data dissemination in VANETs

The reliability of data dissemination in vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) necessitates maximized cooperation between the vehicular nodes and the least degree of congestion. However, non‐line of sight (NLOS) nodes prevent the establishment and sustenance of connectivity between the vehicular nodes. In this paper, a hybrid seagull and thermal exchange optimization (TEO) algorithm‐based NLOS node detection technique is proposed for enhancing cooperative data dissemination in VANETs. It inherits three different versions of the proposed hybridized algorithm; three different approaches for localization of NLOS nodes depending upon its distance from the reference nodes are incorporated. It is considered as a reliable attempt in effective NLOS node localization as it is predominant in maintaining the balancing the degree of exploration and exploitation in the search process. In the first variant, the method of the roulette wheel is utilized for selecting one among the two optimization algorithm. In the second adoption, this hybridization algorithm combines TEO algorithm only after the iteration of SEOA algorithm. In the final adoption, the predominance of the seagull attack mode is enhanced by including the heat exchange formula of TEO algorithms for improving exploitation capability. The simulation experiments of the proposed HS‐TEO‐NLOS‐ND scheme conducted using EstiNet 8.1 exhibited its reliability in improving the emergency message delivery rate by 14.86%, a neighborhood awareness rate by 13%, and the channel utilization rate by 11.24%, compared to the benchmarked techniques under the evaluation done with different number of vehicular nodes and NLOS nodes in the network.     

A secure mutual authentication scheme with non‐repudiation for vehicular ad hoc networks

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have been a research focus in recent years. VANETs are not only used to enhance the road safety and reduce the traffic accidents earlier but also conducted more researches in network value‐added service. As a result, the security requirements of vehicle communication are given more attention. In order to prevent the security threat of VANETs, the security requirements, such as the message integrity, availability, and confidentiality are needed to be guaranteed further. Therefore, a secured and efficient verification scheme for VANETs is proposed to satisfy these requirements and reduce the computational cost by combining the asymmetric and symmetric cryptology, certificate, digital signature, and session key update mechanism. In addition, our proposed scheme can resist malicious attacks or prevent illegal users' access via security and performance analysis. In summary, the proposed scheme is proved to achieve the requirements of resist known attacks, non‐repudiation, authentication, availability, integrity, and confidentiality. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

SOS: Self‐organized secure framework for VANET

While authentication is a necessary requirement to provide security in vehicular ad hoc networks, user's personal information such as identity and location must be kept private. The reliance on road side units or centralized trusted authority nodes to provide security services is critical because both are vulnerable, thus cannot be accessed by all users, which mean security absence. In this paper, we introduce a self‐organized secure framework, deployed in vehicular ad hoc networks. The proposed framework solution is designed not only to provide an effective, integrated security and privacy‐preserving mechanism but also to retain the availability of all security services even if there are no road side units at all and/or the trusted authority node is compromised. A decentralized tier‐based security framework that depends on both trusted authority and some fully trusted nodes cooperated to distribute security services is presented. Our approach combines the useful features of both Shamir secret sharing with a trust‐based technique to ensure continuity of achieving all security services. Mathematical analysis of security issues that the proposed framework achieves as well as the availability of offering security services is provided. Proposed framework examination was done to show the performance in terms of storage, computation complexity, and communication overhead as well as its resilience against various types of attacks. Comparisons with different types of security schemes showed that the protocol developed gave better results in most comparison parameters while being unique ensuring continuity of security services delivery.     

Partially observed cross‐layer optimization for vehicular communications

Vehicular Ad‐hoc Networks (VANETs) that are characterized by frequently changed topology, worse signal noise ratio, and non‐negligible Doppler effect introduce new non‐trivial challenges to Quality‐of‐Service (QoS) provisioning. The methodology of cross‐layer optimization aims to jointly optimize the working behaviors over different layers to achieve a better network performance, eg, throughput and transmission latency. This paper presents a novel cross‐layer optimization method based on Partially Observed Markov Games (POMG) to improve optimization decision against the inaccurate observed context caused by high‐speed movement, sensor errors, and other unavoidable reasons. POMG extends Markov Decision Process (MDP) and Partially Observed Markov Decision Process (POMDP) to dynamically adjust the concerned actions (eg, transmission range, contention window, and bit rate) according to the observed traffic density and thus can improve optimization performance at several aspects, eg,, throughput, channel utilization, delay, and total number of neighbor nodes. The extensive simulations show that POMG could harvest a high entire gain compared with the traditional fixed policy and the other cross‐layer optimization schemes.     

A delay‐bounded routing protocol for vehicular ad hoc networks with traffic lights

In vehicular ad hoc networks, vehicles may use a routing protocol to inform emergent events, for example, car accidents or traffic jams. Hence, many of the researchers are focused on minimizing the end‐to‐end delay of the routing protocol. However, some applications, for example, email or ftp, are not time critical, and radio spectrum is a limited resource. Hence, delay‐bounded routing protocol, whose goal is to deliver messages to the destination within user‐defined delay and minimize the usage of radio, has become an important issue. The delay‐bounded routing protocols deliver message to the destination by the hybrid of data muling (carried by the vehicle) and forwarding (transmitted through radio). When the available time is enough, the message will be delivered by muling; otherwise, it will be delivered by forwarding. However, in an urban area, there are many traffic lights, which may greatly affect the performance of the delay‐bounded routing protocols. Existing works do not consider the effect of traffic lights, and hence, it may adopt an improper delivery strategy and thus wastes much available time. To improve previous works, we propose a novel delay‐bounded routing protocol, which has considered the effect of traffic lights. Whenever a vehicle passes an intersection, it will gather the information of the traffic light and traffic load of the next road section, and thus, it can make a more accurate prediction and adopt a more proper strategy to deliver message. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol can make a better usage of the available time and uses less radio resource to deliver the message in time. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A mobicast routing protocol with carry‐and‐forward in vehicular ad hoc networks

In vehicular networks, safety and comfort applications are two quite different kinds of applications to avoid the emergency traffic accident and enjoy the non‐emergency entertainment. The comfort application drives the challenges of new non‐emergency entertainments for vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). The comfort application usually keeps the delay‐tolerant capability; that is, messages initiated from a specific vehicle at time t can be delivered through VANETs to some vehicles within a given constrained delay time λ. In this paper, we investigate a new mobicast protocol to support comfort applications for a highway scenario in VANETs. All vehicles are located in a geographic zone (denoted as zone of relevance (ZOR)) at time t; the mobicast routing must disseminate the data message initiated from a specific vehicle to all vehicles that have ever appeared in ZOR at time t. This data dissemination must be performed before time t + λ through the carry‐and‐forward technique. In addition, the temporary network fragmentation problem is considered in our protocol design. Also, the low degree of channel utilization is kept to reserve the resource for safety applications. To illustrate the performance achievement, simulation results are examined in terms of message overhead, dissemination success rate, and accumulative packet delivery delay. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Link stability‐aware reliable packet transmitting mechanism in mobile ad hoc network

To guarantee the QoS of multimedia applications in a mobile ad hoc network (MANET), a reliable packet transmitting mechanism in MANET is proposed. In this paper, we introduce an effective link lifetime estimation scheme. According to the current network topology and corresponding estimated link lifetime, the end‐to‐end connection is established adaptively in the best effort manner. Consequently, utilizing the network coding method the relay node combines and forwards the packets on the working path. Furthermore, to keep the balance between the gain in reliability and the amount of redundant packets, the time for sending the redundant packets on the backup path is determined for the link stability intelligently. Simulations show that our mechanisms can provide reliable transmissions for data packets and enhance the performance of the entire network, such as the packet delivery ratio, the end‐to‐end delay and the number of control messages. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance of MIMO cross‐layer MAC protocol based on antenna selection in ad hoc networks

In this paper, we investigate the performance of a cross‐layer (physical and MAC) design for multiple‐input multiple‐output (MIMO) system that aims at maximizing the throughput of ad hoc networks by selecting the optimum antenna combination. Employing this cross‐layer design is shown to improve the overall network performance relative to the case where no antenna selection (AS) is used. To solve the node blocking problem associated with the IEEE 802.11 medium‐access control (MAC) protocol, the proposed protocol leverage the available degrees of freedom offered by the MIMO system to allow neighboring nodes to simultaneously communicate using the zero‐forcing (ZF) Bell‐labs layered space‐time (BLAST) architecture. Using the cross‐layer design, neighboring nodes share their optimum antenna selection (AS) information through control messages. Given this shared information, nodes set their decisions on the number of selected antennas based on the available spatial channels that guarantees collision‐free transmissions. At the destination node, the ZF receiver is employed to extract the desired user data while treating the data from neighboring users as interference. The performance of the proposed cross‐layer design is examined through simulations, where we show that the network throughput is significantly improved compared to conventional MAC protocols. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An Efficient Multi-hop Broadcast Protocol for Emergency Messages Dissemination in VANETs

Black-burst based multi-hop broadcast protocols are effective means to disseminate Emergency messages (EMs) in Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). However, Clear to broadcast (CTB) collision will happen and reduce propagation speed. Aiming at this problem, we propose a Black-burst and multi-channel based multi-hop broadcast (BMMB) protocol. Vehicles with multiple antennas can transmit and sense black-burst at different channels simultaneously based on multi-channel technol-ogy. Compared with existing black-burst based methods, BMMB shortens the iterative procedure to find out the optimal segment. Only one relay vehicle can be rapidly se-lected within the optimal segment without CTB collision. BMMB enables alternative broadcast methods, i.e., uni-directional broadcast and multi-directional broadcast for straight roads and intersections respectively. Theoretical analysis is done for performance evaluation of BMMB, and simulation results demonstrate that BMMB performs better in terms of average one-hop delay and propagation speed.     

An evaluation of routing in vehicular networks using analytic hierarchy process

This paper presents a comprehensive study of the performance of routing protocols in distributed vehicular networks. We propose a novel and efficient routing protocol, namely cross‐layer, weighted, position‐based routing, which considers link quality, mobility and utilisation of nodes in a cross layer manner to make effective position‐based forwarding decisions. An analytic hierarchy process approach is utilised to combine multiple decision criteria into a single weighting function and to perform a comparative evaluation of the effects of aforementioned criteria on forwarding decisions. Comprehensive simulations are performed in realistic representative urban scenarios with synthetic and real traffic. Insights on the effect of different communication and mobility parameters are obtained. The results demonstrate that the proposed protocol outperforms existing routing protocols for vehicular ad hoc networks, including European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI's) proposed greedy routing protocol, greedy traffic aware routing protocol and advanced greedy forwarding in terms of combined packet delivery ratio, end‐to‐end delay and overhead. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modeling and performance analysis of VI‐CRA: A congestion control algorithm for vehicular networks

This study proposes a Vehicle ID‐based CAM Rate Adaptation (VI‐CRA) algorithm for beacon messages in the vehicular network. Foremost, an improved vehicle ID–based analytical model is proposed at the MAC layer of vehicular network. The model weighs the random back‐off number chosen by vehicles participating in the back‐off process, with the vehicle ID incorporated in their respective CAMs. This eventually leads to the selection of a vehicle ID–based random back‐off number, minimizing the probability of collision due to same back‐off number selection. It is worth noting that the improved analytical model outperforms the existing works in terms of average packet delay since only one fourth of the contention window size is used throughout the simulation. To enhance the performance of the analytical model, the paper incorporates a congestion control algorithm, by adapting the rate of CAM broadcast over the control channel. The algorithm is designed considering a wide range of scenarios, ranging from nonsaturated to extremely saturated network (in terms of collision probability) and sparsely distributed to teemed network (in terms of vehicular density). For better analyses of simulation results, the algorithm is applied over different vehicle ID–based back‐off numbers. Simulation results for all the back‐off numbers show that vehicle ID–based CAM rate adaptation algorithm performs better than the traditional fixed CAM rate IEEE 802.11p, even at high vehicular density.     

A game‐theoretic model for users' participation in ephemeral social vehicular networks

Ephemeral social vehicular networks allow for short‐lived communications between occupants. While such transient interactions may provide important usage benefits such as traffic warnings, the reality of short‐lived interactions also poses challenges for deciding to participate in such social networks. In this paper, we develop a game‐theoretic model to understand the role of occupants' incentives to contribute to these ephemeral social networks. We rigorously study the properties of the model and resulting equilibrium outcomes. A further key objective of our work is to evaluate the robustness of our model to different notions of intrinsic motivation for network participation. As a baseline case, we assume that users are homogeneous regarding their motivation. Next, we investigate the impact of different motivational distributions and explore their impact on users' behaviors in a comprehensive simulation setup. We identify the circumstances under which ephemeral social networks are viable and can successfully sustain an increased level of network participation.     

Transmit‐sense‐receive–based cognitive antijamming for airborne ad hoc networks

In this paper, a transmit‐sense‐receive mode–based simultaneous transmit‐and‐receive cognitive antijamming (SCAJ) strategy is proposed to enhance spectrally efficient of airborne networks in congested electromagnetic spectrum environment. We explore the performance of spectrum sensing based on energy detection in SCAJ system. The tight close form expressions of jamming detection and false‐alarm probability are derived under different channels, the throughput of individual SCAJ system is analyzed, and SCAJ transceiver‐based airborne ad hoc network capacity is presented for air platform equipping with digital beamforming antennas. Simulation results show that proposed SCAJ technology can improve the antijamming capability and airborne ad hoc network capacity compared to the half‐duplex cognitive antijamming scheme. It is an effective approach to solve the problem of designing airborne networks arise from the limited availability of spectrum and the desire to provide much higher data rates.     

An opportunistic routing mechanism for real‐time voice service in mobile ad hoc networks

The opportunistic routing mechanism can use several lossy broadcast links to support reliable transmission. In this paper, a simple opportunistic routing mechanism for real‐time multimedia services is proposed. This mechanism is based on the dynamic source routing protocol with some modifications, multiple route request, and route reply messages are used to construct the forwarder list, and the nodes within the forwarder list forward the packets which they overhear. The forwarder list is placed on the packet header in the form of a Bloom filter, which will restrict the size of the forwarder list to a constant value. There are no strict scheduling mechanisms for the forwarding order of the forwarder nodes, thus our opportunistic routing mechanism can be scalable for multiple simultaneous flows. Simulations show that our mechanism can effectively decrease the transmission times and the amount of the control messages for each packet and reduce the end‐to‐end delay for real‐time voice service, the quality of service for these services can be supported well over the unstable wireless channel. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.