An Enhanced Bio-Inspired Routing Algorithm for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) demands reliable communication mechanisms for time-critical communication between vehicles. In VANETs, communication links between vehicles are prone to frequent breaks due to high mobility and topology changes. In this context, this work presents an enhanced bio-inspired routing algorithm (EBIRA) to provide reliable communication. In EBIRA, enhanced ant colony optimization (EACO) finds the optimal long-life short-distance routes with the minimum hops based on distance, received signal strength metric, hop count, and evaporation rate. In EBIRA, the selected path has a short distance and a high level of connectivity at the link level with minimum hops. Choosing the shortest path through minimum hops with high connectivity level links improves route lifetime and reduces frequent link breaks between vehicles. Simulation results show that the performance of EBIRA is better than reliable route discovery by using ant colony optimization (RDACO) and road-aware geographic routing protocol (RAGR) in terms of packet delivery ratio, throughput, and latency. Furthermore, variations of the received signal strength based on vehicle density and speed are evaluated, and the EBIRA route discovery success ratio is estimated and shown based on vehicle density at speed.
 HIGHLIGHTS
 
 Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) demands reliable communication mechanisms for time-critical communication between vehicles. In VANETs, communication links between vehicles are prone to frequent breaks due to high mobility and topology changes
 VANET routing faces various challenges due to its unique characteristics such as high mobility, dynamic topology, unlimited network size, no infrastructure, and wireless communication
 Choosing the shortest path through minimum hops with high connectivity level links improves route lifetime and reduces frequent link breaks between vehicles
 The Less complexity, adaptability and self-organizing characteristics of ACO can cope with frequent topology changes, high mobility, absence of infrastructure, and wireless communication. The robustness feature of the ACO often helps to overcome network interruptions in the form of disconnections
 
 GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT