Inter-vehicular communication using wireless ad-hoc networks.

This thesis proposes a new routing algorithm to allow communication in highly mobile, wireless ad-hoc networks, which in nature are wireless and infrastructureless. In motorway environments, the topology of the network changes frequently and unpredictable due to the mobility of the nodes. We investigate a new reactive routing algorithm based in location information in the context of inter-vehicular communication. In such a scenario, the originator of the communication does not know the position of its communication partner in advance. Rapid topology changes and scarce bandwidth prevent the nodes from exchanging positions regularly throughout the network. Therefore, we focus on reactive algorithms and explore several mechanisms limiting the flooding of discoveries location packets. The originator of a message uses scoped and controlled flooding to reach the destination. The receivers of the flooded message use their knowledge of the local environment to decide whether they can reach the intended destination of the message or retransmit the message to their neighbours. To evaluate our communication algorithm, we first validate it in a small scale network with the results o f a test bed. Then for large scale networks, our protocol is compared with the models of two prominent reactive routing algorithms: Ad-Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV) and Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) on a multi-lane rectangular and circular dual carriageway representative of city and motorway driving. Finally, our algorithm is analysed on a multi-lane circular carriageway representative of a six lane motorway driving with one location-based routing algorithm: Greedy Perimeter Stateless Routing (GPSR). The mobility of the vehicles on a Motorway using a Microscopic traffic model developed in OPNET has been used to evaluate the performance of each protocol in terms of: Route Discovery Time (RDT), End to End Delay (EED), Routing Overhead (RO), Overhead (O), Routing Load (RL) and Delivery Ratio (DR)