Increasing Connectivity in VANETs Using Public Transport Backbones

Abstract

The Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) can be deployed in several regions of urban environments in different days and times, depending on the flow of vehicles. Because of that, the network behavior concerning topological aspects may vary considerably and the guarantee of connectivity between vehicles is a great challenge. The utilization of a fixed infrastructure can enable the use of VANETs, however, this kind of architecture presents prohibitive costs. In big cities, the metropolitan buses that travel on exclusive lanes may be used to set up a metropolitan vehicular data network (backbone). Therefore, this paper considers the implementation of a live mobile backbone, totally ad hoc (BMVA), which provide infrastructure and increase the network connectivity. In order to demonstrate the viability of the BMVA, statistical analysis were performed based on real data from express buses, which travel on exclusive lanes in the city of Curitiba (PR). Statistical, analytical and simulation results confirm that the buses that travel on exclusive lanes could be used to build a totally ad hoc data network and to provide very good network connectivity. In order to exploit the intrinsic connectivity provided by BMVA a new routing protocol, called P-AODV, is also proposed. The P-AODV aims to give priority to the nodes belonging to BMVA during the route discovery process, thereby improving the network performance.