A path selection based routing protocol for urban vehicular ad hoc network (UVAN) environment

Routing in urban environment is a challenging task due to high mobility of vehicles in the network. Many existing routing protocols only consider density, link connectivity, delay, and shortest path information to send the data to the destination. In this paper, a routing protocol is proposed which uses the urban road network information such as multi-lane and flyover to send the data to the destination with a minimum packet forwarding delay. The next path for data forwarding is selected based on a path value calculated by the Road Side Unit for each path connected to a junction. This protocol uses Ground Vehicle to Ground Vehicle (GV2GV) communication, Flyover Vehicle to Flyover Vehicle (FV2FV) communication, and Flyover Vehicle to Ground Vehicle/Ground Vehicle to Flyover Vehicle (FV2GV/GV2FV) communication to enhance the routing performance. Simulation results show that proposed protocol performs better than P-GEDIR, GyTAR, A-STAR, and GSR routing protocols in terms of end-to-end delay, number of network gaps, and number of hops.