Knowing vehicles location HELPS avoiding broadcast packets storm

This paper proposes HELP, a simple and distributed broadcast algorithm for warning delivery services in inter-vehicular ad hoc networks. Assuming that neighborhood location information is available from the routing layer, each node determines whether to re-broadcast the message based on i) the coverage zone of the received message and ii) the estimated position of its neighbors. Investigations are led using a popular microscopic traffic model, in order to ensure realism of the networking performance evaluation. Results show that the algorithm efficiently limits the number of broadcasted messages, which is very close to the optimal. Furthermore, robustness of the results in terms of the number of informed vehicles can also be achieved, provided that a safety error margin is considered in the position estimate