A Novel Clustering Algorithm Based on Mobility for VANET

As a special form of Mobile Ad hoc NETwork (MANET), vehicles in the network can connect to other vehicles on the road and the Internet, and can provide stable and high-speed wireless data access services for vehicles with high velocity. VANET has become an effective technology and important means to guarantee vehicle safety, provide intelligent traffic management of high-speed data communication and vehicle entertainment. However, the typical characteristics of VANET, including rapidly changing network topology, highly dynamic channel condition and node competition in channel accessing, etc., raise difficulties and challenges on data transmission in VANET. To stress the problem, a cluster algorithm based on vehicle mobility for VANET is proposed, in the proposed algorithm, the object function of cluster head selection is formulated based on the vehicle mobility including position, velocity and packet forwarding capability, the process of the clustering algorithm is also presented. Simulations demonstrate that comparing to previously proposed algorithms, the proposed algorithm offers better performance in terms of packet delivery rate, average transmission delay and total throughput.