Opportunistic broadcast in VANETs (OB-VAN) using active signaling for relays selection

A Vehicular Ad hoc NETwork (VANET) is often formed by a large group of vehicles communicating with each other without the use of any infrastructure. A key challenge in such a scenario is to design an efficient broadcast strategy that quickly disseminates the packets in the VANET. While several protocols have been proposed, most of them are based on the proactive and reactive routing schemes of general MANETs and do not satisfy the tight time constraints and high delivery ratio required by VANET safety applications. Therefore, we present an opportunistic routing protocol that uses a modified 802.11 MAC layer using active signaling to select the best relay from all the vehicles that have correctly received the packet. This technique allows for quick and efficient relay selection. The analysis of the ns-2 simulation results show that it is highly suited for VANET safety applications.