An Intersection-Based Traffic Awareness Routing Protocol in VANETs Using Deep Reinforcement Learning

Abstract

In Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks, reliable information transmission relies on an effective routing strategy. Most existing reinforcement learning-based routing methods are ineffective in dynamic network environments and cannot prevent inefficient network routing. Efficient network routing can be controlled by network traffic management, so this paper proposes an intelligent routing strategy based on Deep Reinforcement Learning to enhance routing performance. By integrating intersection forwarding and traffic awareness capabilities, this paper addresses the problem of local optimality and utilizes the Deep Q Network to make intersection forwarding decisions. The state space of this strategy consists of intersection nodes, road information between intersections, and forwarding packet information. When a vehicle node carrying a packet approaches an intersection based on the state space, the intersection node uses a neural network to select the optimal next-hop relay intersection from past learning experiences. It generates appropriate vehicle routing decisions based on information from the current and candidate relay intersections. Finally, we use the real taxi trajectory data of Beijing City to conduct extensive simulation experiments. Simulation results and analysis demonstrate that the proposed strategy outperforms related research regarding higher average packet delivery ratio, shorter average end-to-end delay, and lower average overhead ratio in dense and sparse traffic periods under real road environments. Consequently, this strategy provides efficient and reliable message transmission services for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks.