Impact of Density, Load, and Mobility on the Performance of Routing Protocols in Vehicular Networks

Designing routing protocols in vehicular network is a challenging task due to the high mobility of nodes, the instability of wireless links, and the diversity of deployment scenarios. Several routing protocols have been designed with the goal of solving one or more specific problems of each scenario. In this paper, we present a performance evaluation of routing protocols in vehicular networks addressing the impact of density, load, and mobility pattern. Four protocols are evaluated in urban and highway scenarios. The results presented in this paper provide guidelines for network designers in planning efficient routing protocols for vehicular network, able to adapt to different scenarios.