NEMa: A Novel Energy-Efficient Mobility Management Protocol for 5G/6G-Enabled Sustainable Vehicular Networks

Abstract

As the advancement of 5G and the emergence of 6G technologies unfolds, it is anticipated to support a diverse set of technologies, services, energy resources, and storage capabilities, all while maintaining a high quality of service to users and balancing the load on network devices; however, challenges such as energy consumption, network densification, and rapid mobility of vehicles need to be addressed A critical aspect of this evolution is the mitigation of mobility management, communication, and tracking of vehicles’ rapid mobility in network-dense environments, which currently consumes significant power resources. Consequently, existing mobility management protocols must be adapted and reconfigured to meet the requirements and limitations of energy-constrained vehicular networks. In this article, we introduce a novel energy-efficient mobility management protocol, NEMa, specifically designed for vehicular networks. This protocol optimizes network resources and vehicles’ on-board sensing to minimize energy consumption while maintaining a high packet delivery ratio and minimal interruption time. We have evaluated the performance of the proposed protocol and compared it to existing benchmark mobility management solutions in terms of network overhead, latency, and energy efficiency. Our results demonstrate that our proposed protocol surpasses existing benchmark solutions, thereby contributing to the enhancement of 5G/6G and beyond vehicular networks by addressing the challenges of energy efficiency and network performance.