LACAV: an energy-efficient channel assignment mechanism for vehicular ad hoc networks

Designing an efficient channel assignment system for Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs), which conserves energy, is a challenging task, primarily because of the high degrees of mobility of nodes in these networks. As the high mobility of nodes in vehicular networks leads to frequent handoffs, channel assignment in VANETs becomes a tedious task. In this paper, we propose a channel assignment mechanism using the concepts of learning automata (LA) and reusability. LA is used to optimize the performance of the proposed system by selecting suitable number of reserved channels for the handoff calls and reusability allows the channel to be reused by the different base stations (BSs) based on the reuse distance. The proposed system is designed to reduce the dropping probability. The proposed system is suitable for network architectures in which it is possible to arrange the BSs with different groups of channels sequentially in a particular order that helps in conserving energy. Our experiments clearly indicate that the system reduces the dropping probability and allows a continuous communication throughout the duration of the call. The performance of proposed algorithm is compared with the Vehicular Fast Handover Scheme (VFHS), and the Cooperative scheme for service channel reservation (CRaSCH) scheme in terms of handoff latency, and it is shown that the proposed algorithm performs better than VFHS and CRaSCH.