PGRP: Predictive geographic routing protocol for VANETs

Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANET) are a subclass of Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANET). VANETs are used to build wireless networks between vehicles (V2V) and between vehicles and infrastructure (V2I). Unlike MANETs, VANETs introduce a variety of applications to enhance the safety of drivers and create a comfortable driving environment. These applications send messages through inter-vehicle communications. Routing in a VANET is a fundamental operation that allows a vehicle to construct a source-to-destination route. Routing in VANET is a challenging task due to rapidly changing topology and the high speed mobility of the vehicles involved. This paper presents a Predictive Geographic Routing Protocol (PGRP) that improves connectivity to deal with this challenge. In PGRP, every vehicle gives a weight to its neighbors according to the direction and the angle of the vehicle. PGRP can predict the location of every vehicle at the time of a hello packet based on a vehicle's acceleration. PGRP forwards packets according to the location of vehicle after a short interval. To simulate the PGRP, an integrated simulation model, a NS-2.35 based model and Simulator of Urban Mobility (SUMO) were used to generate a realistic traffic situation. The simulation results showed that PGRR outperformed PDGR, GPSR and GPCR in terms of packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay, and average hops.