Multi-Hop Broadcasting in VANET for Safety Applications: Review and Classification of Protocols

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), which rely on vehicular ad hoc communication networks (VANETs), have the potential to alleviate road accidents and to save lives. Several use cases to VANETs safety applications have been proposed. Most of these applications use multi-hop broadcasting communications to disseminate safety information as far as needed in zones of relevance. A wide variety of multi-hop broadcasting approaches have been proposed in recent years. In this paper the authors review, characterize and categorize multi-hop broadcast protocols. A set of classification criteria is proposed to highlight the design principles and performance of broadcasting protocols.