Mobility management in IVC networks

Inter-vehicle communication, a central component of future in-vehicle Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), will require the development of distributed coordination functions that operate without a fixed communications infrastructure. These functions will be critical for coordination of access to the media, message routing, and security. The stable clustering of nearby nodes is the key for the creation of a scalable network architecture. However, existing clustering algorithms for generic networks do not perform well in a vehicular environment due to the high speeds and the constraints on vehicle mobility. This paper presents a clustering algorithm that greatly improves cluster stability.