Efficient data dissemination protocol based on complex networks’ metrics for urban vehicular networks

Services that aim to make the current transportation system more secure, sustainable, and efficient constitute the Traffic Management Systems (TMS). Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) exert a strong influence for TMS applications, due to TMS services require data, communication, and processing for operation. Besides, VANET allows direct communication between vehicles, and data are exchanged and processed between them. Several TMS services require disseminated information among decision-making vehicles. However, such dissemination is a challenging task, due to the specific characteristics of VANETs, such as short-range communication and high node mobility, resulting in several variations in their topology. In this article, we introduce an extensive analysis of our proposed data dissemination protocol based on complex networks’ metrics for urban VANET scenarios, called DDRX. Each vehicle must build a subgraph to identify the relay node to continue the dissemination process. Based on the local graph, it is possible to select the relay nodes based on complex networks’ metrics. Simulation results show that DDRX offers high efficiency in terms of coverage, number of transmitted packets, delay, and packet collisions compared to well-known data dissemination protocols. Also, DDRX provides significant improvements to a TMS that needs efficient data dissemination.