Low-delay forwarding with multiple candidates for VANETs using multi-criteria decision making

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are envisioned to support driver assistance and automated driving posing strict requirements on communication reliability and delay. To support these applications, we propose Low Delay Forwarding with Multiple Candidates (LDMC), a geographic routing approach combining the advantages of sender-based control and opportunistic forwarding. Candidates are ranked based on position, time since the last status update and neighborhood information using multi-criteria decision making. Priority-dependent timers reduce the contention among forwarders. Our evaluation for freeway and grid scenarios shows substantial improvement over existing protocols for real-time applications requiring 100 ms or less end-to-end delay.