Total GPS-free Localization Protocol for Vehicular Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks (VASNET)

Vehicle Ad Hoc Network (VANET) is the communication between the vehicles on the road. VANET and Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) fusion is termed as Vehicular Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks (VASNET). In VSANET, each vehicle carries an intelligent node, which senses the real phenomena and collects the required data. As the sensor nodes are installed on the vehicles, these are prone to high mobility and hence, new protocols need to be designed. Implementation of VSANET involves a lot of challenges such as, frequency allocation, standards for physical and link layers, routing, localization and security issues. In most of the proposed localization algorithms for VSANET, there is good amount of dependency on the other technologies such as Global Positioning System (GPS), which has major problems such as system not available continuously, non-availability in tunnel and not being robust enough. Therefore, GPS is not a reliable solution. In this paper, we delve further with GPS technology and discuss some of the localization algorithms. Here, we propose a novel localization protocol for VASNET which gains benefit of sensor nodes and is totally GPS free. Using GloMoSim simulator the protocol has been simulated and we observed that by varying the parameters like number of Road Side Sensors (RSS), transmission ranges and rate of well-working sensors, the exact location of a vehicle is computed in 93% cases.