Cluster Connectivity Assurance Metrics in Vehicular ad hoc Networks

Many applications introduced by Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs), such as intelligent transportation and roadside advertisement, make VANETs become an important component of metropolitan area networks. In VANETs, mobile nodes are vehicles which are equipped with wireless antennas; and they can communicate with each other by wireless communication on ad-hoc mode or infrastructure mode. Clustering vehicles into different groups can introduce many advantages for VANETs as it can facilitate resource reuse and increase system capacity. The main contribution of our work is a new strategy for clustering a VANET and improvements in many classical clustering metrics. One of the main ideas is the definition of a new optimized selection metric for the clustering of vehicular nodes, in the framework of Next Generation Vehicular ad-hoc Network. These metrics should select clusterheads which provide safe clusters and avoid collisions with adjacent vehicle nodes and intend to create stable clusters by reducing reclustering overhead and prolonging cluster lifetime © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Peer-review under responsibility of the Conference Program Chairs.