A game theoretical based rebroadcasting protocol for content dissemination in VANETs

Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) are a category of Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) characterized by frequent topology changes. VANETs have many promising applications such as improving vehicle drivers’ safety, and decreasing accidents. Vehicles communicate via Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle to Roadside (V2R) mainly by broadcast, which needs to be efficient, especially in congested areas. An effective rebroadcasting protocol has to be designed carefully in order to maximize reachability while minimizing delay and the number of rebroadcasts. However, prior work typically minimizes either congestion or latency at the expense of reachability and the number of rebroadcasts. In this paper, we present the Nash Equilibrium Scheme (NES), a rebroadcast algorithm that outperforms prior work on reachability, number of rebroadcasts and delay, especially in congested areas. NES attains these goals by considering key environmental factors such as a number of received messages and distance to the event. We evaluate NES’s performances through NS2 simulations.