VANETs-based real-time traffic data dissemination

Traffic congestion is a very serious problem in large cities. With the number of vehicles increasing rapidly, especially in cities whose economy is booming, the situation is getting even worse. In this paper, by leveraging the techniques of Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) we present a real-time abnormal traffic data dissemination protocol. Specifically, all vehicles running on the same road segment are regarded as a cluster to generate traffic message about this segment. To reduce communication cost, only abnormal traffic data is issued and spread to nearby road segments. By employing event-driven and period combined mechanism, the abnormal traffic messages are disseminated to the vehicles that probably need the messages in time. We propose a distance dependent forwarder selection method to disseminate traffic message. When transmitted inside a cluster, messages are forwarded along the segment from one end to the other based on the least hops principle; while transmitted among clusters, messages are transmitted in epidemic routing mode, which ensure the fast and reliable dissemination. To evaluate the performance of our protocol, we use the real traffic data of Beijing at peak hour. The simulation results demonstrate that our protocol is feasible and efficient for metropolitan-size city.