Adapting geographical DTN routing for enhanced connectivity in partitioned VANETs on highways

Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) have significant potential to host diverse applications associated with traffic safety, traffic efficiency and infotainment. VANETs have distinct characteristics and adapting routing protocols for effective communication is a subject of interest for many researchers in this domain. In this paper, we propose a position based Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) routing protocol in VANET for the highways. The solution is designed for partitioned environments which suffer from frequent network disconnections. Our solution presents the most suitable next hop selection mechanism through a filtration process. The filtration process utilizes node position, current direction, speed and the predicted direction that are acquired by Direction Indicator Light (DIL). NS-2 is used to evaluate the performance of the proposed routing protocol. The results show increment in packet transmission as compared to previous works. Finally, the proposed protocol contributes to route stability in VANET.