Fog Computing- and Software Defined Network-Based Routing Protocol for Vehicular Ad-hoc Network

Over time, wireless technology is evolving impulsively. Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) is an ad-hoc network consisting of several vehicles that flow on t he s ame road. The existence of such networks revolutionizes the wireless communication field. The immense increase in the number of smart vehicles throughout time is the reason behind the massive evolution in VANET technologies. As a result, VANETs requirements are evolving quickly and having more flexible, scalable, and well-connected routes in VANETs is becoming essential in any new routing protocol. This paper presents a new efficient routing protocol for VANETs, namely, Innovative Cluster-Based Dual-Phase Routing Protocol Using Fog Computing and Software-Defined Vehicular Network (ICDRP-F-SDVN) utilizes state-of-the-art technologies to overcome the drawbacks of traditional VANETs routing protocols. The use of fog computing and Software-Defined Networks (SDN) combined in our protocol will present a robust new architecture that meets all the new requirements and overcomes challenges arising from technological development and rapid escalation in the number of smart vehicles. Simultaneously, the use of the clustering technique will lessen the long-distance communication in each cluster. In conjunction with the clustering technique proposed, we propose an efficient control overhead reduction mechanism, thereby lowering the messages' exchanges imposed. Interestingly, our proposed protocol is a dual-phase routing protocol; when the SDN fails to deliver packets, traditional Ad-hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) handles them as a fallback mechanism. Our proposed ICDRP-F-SDVN protocol has achieved impressive simulation results.