Routing protocols for inter-vehicular networks: A comparative study in high-mobility and large obstacles environments

An ad hoc network is composed of mobile nodes without the presence of a fixed infrastructure. Communications among nodes are accomplished by forwarding data packets for each other, on a hop-by-hop basis along the current connection to the destination node. In particular, vehicle-to-vehicle communications have been studied, in recent years, to improve driver safety. As more of such applications of high-mobility ad hoc networks emerge, it is critical that the routing protocol employed is capable of efficiently coping with the high-frequency of broken links (i.e., robust with respect to high-mobility). This paper presents a comprehensive comparative study in a city environment of eight representative routing protocols for wireless mobile ad hoc networks and inter-vehicular networks developed in recent years. In a city environment, communication protocols need adapt fast moving nodes (e.g., vehicles on streets) and large obstacles (e.g., office buildings). In this paper, we elaborate upon extensive simulation results based on various network scenarios, and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these techniques with regard to their support for highly mobile nodes.