Multi-hop Clustering Solution Based on Beacon Delay for Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) are a specific type of networks, wherein nodes are vehicles equipped with wireless receivers. The vehicles can exchange data by using wireless communication either in ad-hoc mode or infrastructure mode through equipments installed on the road side. In vehicular networks, clustering is one of the main dissemination methods, as it enhances the communication reliability and performance. However, a good clustering solution for VANETs has to address the highly dynamic and complex aspects (e.g. real time) of such environments. Of this fact, we propose a novel multi-hop clustering model including: cluster construction/destruction mechanism, multi-hop links establishment and cluster head election algorithm based on a new metric. Indeed, the proposed metric captures real environment parameters. The simulation results show that our clustering solution performs better than existing solutions especially when the obstacle shadowing model is used which is the most likely scenario in real situations.