Can we generate efficient routes by using only beacons? Backbone routing in VANETs

Point-to-point data delivery in Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) has been a challenging issue due to the vehicle movement, limited wireless resources and lossy feature of wireless channel. In VANETs, due to the frequent topology changes, traditional ad hoc routing protocols incur a high overhead for the route maintenance. In this paper, we propose a new approach to route data messages in VANETs. The proposed protocol uses dynamically generated backbone vehicles to forward data messages. The protocol generates the backbone by using only hello messages. The protocol selects the backbone vehicles by considering vehicle movement dynamics and link quality between vehicles. As a result, the selected backbone vehicles generate a reliably connected network. By using packet forwarding with the backbone nodes, the proposed protocol can reduce the message overhead and MAC layer contention time at each node while maintaining a high packet delivery ratio. We show the effectiveness of the proposed protocol with both theoretical analysis and computer simulations.