OPRM: an efficient hybrid routing protocol for sparse VANETs

Abstract

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a subclass of mobile ad hoc network (MANET) that has emerged as an area of research for deployment of safety and infotainment applications. In VANETs, routing the packets for the above-mentioned applications is complex as the vehicle mobility is rapid and leads to dynamic network topology. In sparse VANET, route maintenance is still more complex since the number of vehicles is less. To repair the route in a sparse VANET, road side units (RSUs) are used to replace the vehicles. In this paper, a new on-demand routing protocol with proactive route maintenance (OPRM) using RSUs has been proposed for sparse VANETs. This protocol also proposes a power optimisation mechanism for the deployed RSUs. The proposed protocol along with the power optimisation mechanism has shown substantial improvements over the ad hoc on demand routing (AODV) and greedy perimeter stateless routing (GPSR) protocols.