Linear regression-based delay-bounded routing protocols for VANETs

Routing protocols for vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have attracted a lot of attention recently. Most of the researches emphasize on minimizing the end-to-end delay without paying attention to reducing the usage of radio. This paper focuses on delay-bounded routing, whose goal is to deliver messages to the destination within user-defined delay and to minimize the usage of radio because radio spectrum is a limited resource. The messages can be delivered to the destination by the hybrid of data muling (carried by the vehicle) and forwarding (transmitted through radio). In the existing protocol, a vehicle may only switch the delivery strategy (muling or forwarding) at an intersection according to the available time of the next road segment, which is between the current intersection and the next intersection. To improve previous works, our protocol uses linear regression to predict the available time and the traveling distance, and thus, the vehicle can switch to a proper delivery strategy at a proper moment and can reduce the number of relays by radio. Our protocol contains two schemes: the greedy and centralized schemes. The greedy scheme uses only the current sampling data to predict the available time and decide when to switch the delivery strategy, whereas the centralized scheme uses the global statistical information to choose a minimum-cost path. Simulation results justify the efficiency of the proposed protocol. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.