Direction based clustering algorithm for data dissemination in vehicular networks

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are important component for the development of Intelligent Transportation System. Due to the features of VANET, data dissemination is an important issue that has to be addressed. In this paper we propose a direction based clustering algorithm for data dissemination. This protocol is used to estimate the density of vehicles on a given road. As in any clustering algorithm, the formation of the cluster and the use of the bandwidth are important tasks. In the proposed solution the packet is forwarded to vehicles only if they are moving along the same direction. The simulations show that the proposed protocol reduces the number of broadcast packets being sent on the network. To choose the best technology for VANET applications, the technologies 802.11p and 802.11b are compared with TCP/IP and Wireless Access Vehicular Environment (WAVE) stack protocols. This results obtained shows that WAVE stack is better than TCP/IP stack, in terms of performance, in vehicular environment.