Combining MPLS with Ad-hoc routing protocols for a VANET congestion alert

In recent years, the vehicle industry has heavily invested in adding communication capabilities to exchange data among vehicles through wireless technology. This is already implemented in cars deployed in large cities around the world, such as buses and police vehicles. The Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) simplifies network deployment for data exchange. This is due to its infrastructure, which does not require a pre-setup arrangement. Vehicles on the road can form a network to exchange data dynamically and handle the routing task of the data. The only major challenge is the high speed of the vehicles, which makes the network extremely dynamic and necessitates immediate data processing before the link is destroyed due to vehicle movement. Therefore, delays in processing data are critical. The delay occurs because of the IP-based addressing mode used in the routing tables, which creates overhead. An alternative approach for sophisticated IP-lookup table routing is Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS). It is a promising data forwarding technique that increases the speed and controls the data exchange by using labels to forward the data. This paper proposes a concept that combines the capabilities of a VANET network connected to an MPLS-based infrastructure located on roadsides through different scenarios in a simulation environment by using the OPNET modeller 14.5 simulator, and two sorts of ad hoc routing protocols, reactive and proactive, are compared. The results showed that the proposed concept provides an improvement in performance and can be used to detect vehicle congestion and alert drivers to avoid certain roads.