Clustering-based data transmission algorithms for VANET

In recent years, vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) has received considerable attention. In VANET, safety application and user Internet accessing related application are expected to be supported. However, the characteristics of VANET, including high-speed mobility, channel fading property, channel competition mechanism, and various quality of service (QoS) of user services, etc., pose challenges and difficulties on data transmission in VANET. In this paper, clustering-based scheme is applied for data transmission in VANET, a cluster head (CH) selection algorithm and a cluster switching algorithm for VANET are presented. The proposed CH selection algorithm jointly considers node degree, the available resource of candidate CHs and the velocity difference between candidate CHs and other cluster members (CMs) in a given cluster. The proposed optimal cluster switching scheme stresses the QoS requirements of both delay-sensitive service and throughput-sensitive service, through defining utility functions for accessing various clusters, the optimal destination cluster can be obtained. The numerical results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithms.