An analytical evaluation of a Map-based Sensor-data Delivery Protocol for VANETs

The Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN) approach is considered the best strategy to address the specific issues of the VANETs, namely high mobility, variable node density or frequent radio obstacles. Several protocols have been proposed for DTNs, being the epidemic routing (and variations of it) the most representative protocol. Nevertheless, the availability of navigation systems, thanks to which each vehicle is aware of its location within a map, introduces the possibility for a new routing approach, known as Geographic Routing. In this paper we analytically evaluate the performance of our previously presented Map-based Sensor-data Delivery Protocol (MSDP). We introduce an analytical model that takes into account the effect of constrained buffers. The results show that adopting the Map-based Sensor-data Delivery Protocol (MSDP) routing mechanism allows achieving a reasonable delivery time with an insignificant overhead compared with epidemic routing.