Efficient Selection of Relay Vehicle for Accident Reporting in VANETs

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) offer a promising technology to promote traffic safety by providing real-time communications in the form of vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-toinfrastructure communications. Roadside units (RSUs) play an important role in the dissemination of warning messages that used in VANETs’ safety-related applications. However, due to the expense of deploying and maintaining RSUs, they cannot be deployed in large enough quantities as to provide universal coverage. This, above all, leads to situations where communications cannot be routed from a vehicle to the nearest RSU. In this study, an efficient scheme for finding the best relay vehicle is proposed to mechanically route a safety-related message from a disabled vehicle to a RSU. To accomplish this goal, we utilize vehicle destination information obtained from GPS or navigation systems. In addition, an algorithm is proposed to efficiently perform this operation. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms alternate selection method.