Vehicular Address Configuration

Vehicular networks are characterized by unique properties and challenging problems. The high mobility and density of nodes impede the direct utilization of traditional techniques and protocols in this context. In particular, automatic IP address configuration in vehicular ad-hoc networks is a challenging and as yet unexplored issue. The importance of this problem cannot be overemphasized since any application that involves communication between two or more nodes requires the presence of unique identifiers to deliver the data to the right destination. Due to the very high mobility of vehicles, traditional mechanisms to automatically associate an IP address to a wireless node fail to perform well. To solve this problem, we propose a novel scheme that exploits the topology of vehicular ad-hoc networks and an enhanced DHCP service with dynamically elected leaders to guarantee reliable and fast address configuration. We provide extensive simulation results that demonstrate the efficacy of our scheme.