Stability-delay efficient cluster-based routing protocol for VANET

Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET) can be used in safety applications to transfer information about some events (e.g. accidents) with minimum time. Sending this information is achieved by using a routing algorithm. A large number of cluster-based routing schemes were presented for VANET. Unfortunately, the mobility of vehicles in unexpected directions negatively affects the performance of these schemes, destroys the network links, and decreases the routes' stability. This problem leads to repeat route discovery and maintenance operations and, as a result increases the overhead and delay. Thus, they are not an optimal selection for safety applications. Moreover, the cluster-based policies need efficient clustering approaches, but the previous ones fail to enhance the stability of links and cluster heads. Moreover, they did not focus on the stability of gateways. Therefore, a new clustering formation approach that focuses on the stability of cluster head and gateway is proposed. It gives priority to the parked and stopped vehicles to be cluster heads and gateways. Moreover, a new cluster-based routing protocol to build optimal paths with minimum delay and maximum stability called CRDS is suggested for safety applications. CRDS depends on the suggested clustering approach and computes the optimal routes depending on a novel suggested optimization model. Several simulation scenarios with various mobility speeds and numbers of stopped and parked vehicles have been run. The results showed that CRDS is better than LRCA, PASRP and CVoEG according to network overhead, average end to end delay, path stability, cluster head stability, and packet delivery ratio.