Opportunistic Vehicular Routing

invited paper Abstract—In a wireless ad hoc network, an opportunistic routing strategy is a strategy where there is no predefined rule for choosing the next node to destination (as it is the case in conventional schemes such as OLSR, DSR or even Geo-Routing). Rather, an intermediate node en route acts in an impromptu fashion and takes a decision that is based solely on current circumstances. A popular example of opportunistic routing is the “delay tolerant ” forwarding to “data mules ” when a direct path to destination does not exist. Conventional routing in this case would just “drop ” the packet. With opportunistic routing, a node acts upon the available information: it seeks the neighbor best qualified to “carry ” the packet to destination. If none is available, it will await the right opportunity. This procedure is also known as “data muling ” or Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) routing. The Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET), because of its intrinsic intermittent connectivity (during off peak hours and at night) is an ideal “playground ” for opportunistic rout-ing/multicast. In this paper we will examine two examples of VANET opportunistic routing: Delay Tolerant geo-inspired rout-ing and real time video stream multicast of emergency/accident multimedia reports to vehicles in disconnected platoons using network coding. I