Routing Protocol Using Virtual Nodes for Traffic Information Collection in Information Centric Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks

Dynamic Route Guidance (DRG) systems determine the traveling routes of vehicles and solve traffic problems in urban areas. Ad-hoc network composed of vehicles, called VANET is being conducted and VANET-based DRG systems are proposed. In VANET-based DRG systems, a dynamic topology on VANET is one of the biggest challenges. Packet loss prevents decision of proper traveling routes. Therefore, this paper adapts the ICN concept to VANET, called IC-VANET. In IC-VANET, each vehicle acquires traffic information by multi-hop request / response type communication, and it caches contents. Then, we propose a traffic information collection and routing protocols using Virtual Nodes (VNRP) where packets are relayed via Virtual Nodes preferentially for improving data acquisition rate and communication overhead. Virtual Node (VN) is a logical node that is maintained at a specific area considering the vehicle density by inter-vehicle communication with surrounding vehicles, and it collects traffic information. We compared the proposal method with the conventional VANET method by simulation and evaluated the performance.