Data Dissemination with Dynamic Backbone Selection in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Efficient data dissemination in Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) has been a challenging issue due to vehicle movements, limited wireless resources and lossy characteristics of wireless communication. In this paper, we use dynamically generated backbone vehicles to disseminate information. The proposed protocol selects the backbone vehicles by considering vehicle movement dynamics and link quality between vehicles. The proposed approach can significantly reduce the MAC layer contention time at each node while maintaining a high packet dissemination ratio. We show the effectiveness of the proposed protocol by using theoretical analysis and computer simulations.