A Survey on Clustering Techniques Used in Vehicular Ad Hoc Network

A vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) can be described as a special type of Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET), which uses vehicles to create a mobile network. VANET is the future of transportation system as all the vehicles in network communicate with each other and thus, avoid a sheer amount of accidents on roads. The communication in VANET is at greater risk because the messages are broadcasted and a wireless medium is used for data propagation. For secure communication among these vehicles, clustering algorithms are preferred. Formation of stable clusters withstanding the mobility pattern of the vehicles is important key factor for clustering algorithms in vehicular networks. Cluster formation in VANET is highly challenging as there is no global topology and even the nodes are highly mobile. Many clustering schemes have been proposed by the researchers which can be classified into either mobility based clustering or non-mobility based clustering algorithms. This paper focuses on the survey of clustering algorithms proposed for stable cluster formation and more secure communications. Keywords— Clustering in VANET, Classification of clustering techniques, Vehicular ad hoc network