A Novel Geo-Broadcast Algorithm for V2V Communications over WSN

The key for enabling the next generation of advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), the cooperative systems, is the availability of vehicular communication technologies, whose mandatory installation in cars is foreseen in the next few years. The definition of the communications is in the final step of development, with great efforts on standardization and some field operational tests of network devices and applications. However, some inter-vehicular communications issues are not sufficiently developed and are the target of research. One of these challenges is the construction of stable networks based on the position of the nodes of the vehicular network, as well as the broadcast of information destined to nodes concentrated in a specific geographic area without collapsing the network. In this paper, a novel algorithm for geo-broadcast communications is presented, based on the evolution of previous results in vehicular mesh networks using wireless sensor networks with IEEE 802.15.4 technology. This algorithm has been designed and compared with the IEEE 802.11p algorithms, implemented and validated in controlled conditions and tested on real vehicles. The results suggest that the characteristics of the designed broadcast algorithm can improve any vehicular communications architecture to complement a geo-networking functionality that supports a variety of ADAS.