Survey On Various Routing Protocols For VANET

Submitted By
Anusha C H-14MCS0050

Abstract:
Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET) is a subclass of Mobile ad hoc networks which
provides a distinguished approach for Intelligent Transport System (ITS). The survey of routing
protocols in VANET is important and necessary for smart ITS. Here moving vehicles act as
nodes in a network to create a dynamic network. VANET has very dynamic topology, large and
variable network size, and constrained mobility, these characteristics led to the need for
efficient routing and resource saving VANET protocols. In this paper we discussed the
characteristics and challenges of routing in VANETs. We surveyed and compared instances
for all the classes of protocols. Finally the paper concludes by a tabular comparison of the
various routing protocols for VANET.
Introduction:
Vehicular Ad hoc networks (VANETs) are a special type of mobile ad hoc networks;
where vehicles are simulated as mobile nodes. VANET also has special characteristics that
distinguish it from other mobile ad hoc networks; the most important characteristics are: high
mobility, self-organization, distributed communication, road pattern restrictions, and no
restrictions of network size , all these characteristics made VANETs environment a challenging
for developing efficient routing protocols. Alerting drivers about the conditions of roads, trafc,
and related aspects are crucial to safety and to the regulation of vehicle ow. To achieve this,
timely and accurate information is essential. Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) typically
addresses this problem.All information related to trafc mobility on the road, such as trafc
density, speed, and directions of the vehicles as well as the weather, are gathered by using intervehicle and vehicle-to road side communication technologies.
VANET is a new technology that integrates the potentials of new generation wireless
networks into vehicles. VANET aims to offer (i) continuous connectivity for mobile users while
they are on the road, (ii) efcient wireless connection between vehicles without access to any
xed infrastructure, which enables the ITS. Consequently, VANET is also known as intervehicle communication (IVC).VANET devices such as on-board units are xed in vehicles and
function as the nodes to transmit and receive messages through wireless networks. These
devices provide drivers and passengers with the latest information on accidents, ooding, rain,
trafc jams, and any disturbances. By obtaining such information on time, drivers can make
appropriate decisions and avoid mishaps. The main focus of this paper is to do survey on routing
protocols for VANET f the protocols revealed that position-based routing and geo-casting are
more capable than other routing protocols for VANETs because of environmental limitations.
The main goal of routing protocol is to provide optimal paths between network nodes via
minimum overhead. Many routing protocols have been developed for VANETs environment,
which can be classified in many ways, according to different aspects; such as: protocols
characteristics, techniques used, routing information, quality of services, network structures,
routing algorithms, and so on. Some research papers classified VANETs routing protocols into
five classes: topology-based, position-based, geocast -based, broadcast, and cluster-based
routing protocols, this classification is based on the routing protocols characteristics and
techniques used. As well, other papers classified VANETs routing protocols according to the
network structures, into three classes: hierarchical routing, flat routing, and position-base
routing. Moreover, they can be categorized into two classes according to routing strategies:
proactive and reactive . On the other hand other papers classified them into two categories:
geographic-based and topology-based, according to the routing information used in packet

forwarding. Also based on quality of services classification, there are three types of protocols
that dealing with network topology (hierarchical, flat, and position aware). The main focus of
this paper is to do survey on routing protocols for VANET.The protocols revealed that positionbased routing and geo-casting are more capable than other routing protocols for VANETs
because of environmental limitations.

Vanet Architecture:
There are two types of communication available in regarding VANET- V2V and
V2R.Vehicle can communicate with other vehicles directly forming vehicle to vehicle
communication (V2V) or communicate with xed equipment next to the road, referred to as
road side
unit (RSU) forming vehicle to infrastructure communication (V2I). The
communication between vehicles or between a vehicle and an RSU is achieved through a
wireless medium called WAVE. It is method of communication provides a wide range of
information to drivers and travelers and enables safety applications to enhance road safety and
provide a comfortable driving. The main system components are the application unit (AU),
OBU and RSU. Typically the RSU hosts an application that provides services and the OBU is a
peer device that uses the services provided. The application may reside in the RSU or in the
OBU; the device that hosts the application is called the provider and the device using the
application is described as the user. Each vehicle is equipped with an OBU and a set of
sensors to collect and process the information then send it on as a message to other vehicles or
RSUs through the wireless medium;
a) On Board Unit (OBU) : An OBU is a wave device usually mounted on-board a vehicle used
for exchanging information with RSUs or with other OBUs. It consists of a resource command
processor (RCP), and resources include a read/write memory used to store and retrieve information, a user interface, a specialised interface to connect to other OBUs and a network device
for short range wireless communica- tion
b) Application Unit (AU):The AU is the device equipped within the vehicle that uses the
applications provided by the provider using the communication capabilities of the OBU.
c) RSU: The RSU is a wave device usually xed along the road side or in dedicated locations
such as at junctions or near parking spaces. The RSU is equipped with one network device for
a dedicated short range communication based on IEEE 802.11p radio technology.
Vanet Applications
The different types of VANET applications are categorized as follows:

Safety applications - The safety applications enhance the protection of passengers by

sending and receiving information pertinent to vehicle safety. Generally, these alerts,
such as cooperative collision warning, lane change warning, emergency video
streaming, and incident management, are directly sent to the drivers or are received by
the automatic active safety system.

Comfort applications - Comfort applications are the VANET applications associated

with the comfort level of the traveler,electronic toll collection, parking lot payment, and
trafc management. These applications are expected to soon become extremely popular.

All VANET applications have a common set of requirements. The most common
requirements are as follows: 101000 m coverage, a maximum vehicle speed of 500 km/h, and
latency in the range of 50500 ms. Generally, safety applications must not stop for more than
200 ms.
Vanet Challenges
1) Highly dynamic topology. The topologies of VANETs will not be constant, and they
always vary based on vehicle speed.
2) Frequently disconnected network. VANETs will not have constant connectivity because
of the high-speed movement between vehicles. In low-density vehicles, the link is highly
likely to be disconnected
3) Infrastructure access. Communication infrastructure along the road, such as roadside
units (RSUs) and public hotspots, allows access to network servers, typically in the
Internet. Given that roadside units and public hotspots do not provide full wireless
coverage, it is expected that for security mechanisms, such as for the management and
distribution of cryptographic keys via a centralized architecture, infrastructure is not
available all the time.
Overview of VANET routing protocols
One of the major technological challenges faced by VANETs is developing an efcient
routing protocol for a highly changeable topology. VANET require new types of routing
protocols. As opposed to wired infrastructure, no dedicated router nodes are used, and routing
protocols have to be performed by the user nodes (vehicles), which may be mobile and
unreliable.
We classied the current VANET routing protocols based on the architecture of VANET
communication into two main categories: vehicle-to-vehicle-based (V2V) routing protocols and
vehicle-to-infrastructure-based (V2I) routing protocols.
1)Vehicle-to-vehicle-based (V2V) routing protocols
V2V protocols perform vehicle-to-vehicle communication but do not focus on xed
infrastructure on roads. It can be divided into ve groups:
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.

topology-based (ad hoc) routing protocols

position-based routing protocols
cluster-based routing protocols
geo-cast-based routing protocols
multicast-based routing protocols
broadcast-based routing protocols

A) Topology-based (ad hoc) routing protocols: These protocols discover the route and
maintain it in a table before the sender starts transmitting data. They are further divided into
Proactive, Reactive and hybrid protocols.
i) Proactive (table-driven) routing protocols :
Proactive protocols allow a network node to use the routing table to store routes
information for all other nodes, each entry in the table contains the next hop node used in the
path to the destination, regardless of whether the route is actually needed or not. The table must
be updated frequently to reflect the network topology changes, and should be broadcast
periodically to the neighbors.
Disadvantage:
This scheme may cause more overhead especially in the high mobility network.
However, routes to destinations will always be available when needed. As in VANET,
nodes (vehicles) have high mobility and move at a high speed. The proactive routing
protocol is unsuitable for this.
Do not have initial route discovery delay but consumes lot of bandwidth for periodic
updates of topology.
ii) Reactive Routing Protocols
Reactive routing protocols (also called on-demand) reduce the network overhead by
maintaining routes only when needed. These protocols are called as on-demand routing
protocols as they periodically update the routing table, when some data is there to send
Advantage: Reactive routing protocols are applicable to the large size of the mobile ad hoc
networks which are highly mobility and frequent topology changes
Disadvantage: These protocols use flooding process for route discovery, which causes more
routing overhead and also suffer from the initial route discovery process, which make them
unsuitable for safety applications in VANET.
iii) Hybrid protocols :
Hybrid routing protocols are a combination of the reactive and proactive routing
protocols to make routing more scalable and efcient. Most hybrid routing protocols are zonebased, which means that the number of nodes is divided into different zones to make route
discovery and maintenance more reliable. The overall characteristic of hybrid protocols is that
Advantage: Reduce the network overhead caused by proactive and reactive routing.Handles the
network delay caused by reactive routing protocols, and performs route discovery more
efciently.
Disadvantage: The drawback of these protocols is that they are not designed for environments
characterized by highly dynamic nodes behaviour and rapidly changing topology.

B) Position-based routing protocols

These protocols use geographic positioning information to select the next forwarding
hops so no global route between source and destination needs to be created and maintained. The
information from the GPS device is used in making routing decisions. This type of routing
performs better as creating and maintaining a global route from the source node to the
destination node are not necessary. The position-based routing protocols can be classied as
non-delay tolerant network (non-DTN) routing protocols, delay tolerant network (DTN) routing
protocols, and hybrid routing protocols.
a) Non-delay tolerant networks (non-DTNs) routing protocols
These protocols aim to transmit data packets to the destination as soon as possible.
Advantage: The basic outlook in the greedy approach of non-DTN routing protocols is that a
node advances its packet to its neighbour, which is close to the destination.
Disadvantage: The forwarding strategy might be unsuccessful if the neighbours are not nearer
to the destination than the node. The routing protocols in this group have their individual
recovery approach to tackle such failures.
b) Geographic source routing (GSR)
The GSR protocol merges the position-based routing with topological information and is
aimed at routing in urban surroundings.
Advantage: It uses the Dijkstra shortest path algorithm to compute the shortest path from
source to destination. The packet delivery ratio of the GSR protocol's simulation is better than
that of the AODV and DSR protocols .
Disadvantage: It ignores situations such as a sparse network where the number of nodes for
forwarding packets is insufcient. This routing protocol also suffers from a high routing
overhead.

C) Cluster-based routing protocols

Generally, cluster-based routing protocols are more suitable for network cluster
topology. Every cluster has one cluster head which is responsible for intra- and inter-cluster
management purposes. The intra-cluster nodes interact with one another through direct links,
whereas inter-cluster interaction is performed through the cluster headers. In cluster-based
routing protocols, the vehicles close to each other form a cluster.
a) Cluster-based routing (CBR)
In the CBR protocol, the geographic area is separated into square grids. Every single
node computes the best possible neighbour cluster header to deliver data to the next hop based
on the geographic information.

Advantage: The routing overhead is less as it does not need to discover the route and is saved
in the routing table.
Disadvantage: This protocol does not consider velocity and direction, which are signicant
factors in VANET.
b) Cluster-based directional routing protocol (CBDRP)
In the CBDRP protocol, the vehicles which travel in the same route are split into several
clusters. Each vehicle can communicate via radio with its neighbour clusters. The centre
position of one cluster is xed after it is divided.

D) Geocast-based routing protocols

Fundamentally, the geocast-based routing is a position-based multicast routing
employed to forward a message to all the vehicles in a xed topographical area. The main goal
of this approach is to distribute the packet from the source node to all the other nodes in a
particular geographical area or zone of relevance (ZOR). The ZOR is dened as a geographic
region where vehicles should receive the geocast messages.
One drawback of geocast is network partitioning and the presence of unfavourable
neighbours, which may hinder the proper forwarding of messages. The various geocast routing
protocols are IVG, CGR, AGR, ROVER.
a) Inter-vehicle geocast (IVG)
The IVG protocol is used to disseminate information associated with security, such as
the occurrence of accidents, oods, or other natural calamities, to vehicles on highways. In the
IVG protocol, risk areas are established with respect to the driving direction and the position of
the vehicles, which are detected with the help of the GPS. However, the messages received by
the vehicle must not be instantly rebroadcasted but have to be stored for a certain period (known
as defer time) to determine if the messages should be rebroadcasted. these procedures are
extremely costly in highly dynamic environments such as transportation systems.
b) Abiding geocast routing (AGR)
AGR is a special geocast routing protocol apart from the classical geocast routing,
which requires that the packets be sent to all nodes during the geocast lifetime (a certain period)
inside the geocast destination region. Services such as position-based advertising, position-based
publish and subscribe, and many other location-based services benet from AGR.

E) Multicast-based routing protocols

Multicast transmission in the VANET is typically a transmission from a single source to
multiple destinations within a specic geographic region and is usually conducted via geocast
routing. Traditional multicast protocols were designed for wired networks that have a stable
network topology. VANETs are benecial for multicast protocols because of their wireless
nature, which allows a message sent by a node to be broadcast to all nodes within range.
VANET nodes do not have to conserve power because vehicles provide substantial power
supply for long durations, which enable the nodes to perform complex computational tasks.
In wireless MANET multicast routing protocols, a multicast group is composed of
senders and receivers. To connect senders and receivers, each protocol constructs either a tree or
a mesh as the routing structure. Forwarding nodes in the routing structure are not interested in
multicast packets but function as routers to forward such packets to receivers. Group members
(senders and receivers) and forwarding nodes are also called tree or mesh nodes depending on
the routing structure. Based on the multicast routing structure, the multicast routing protocols
can be classied as either tree-based or mesh-based. The most common multicast routing
protocols are multicast ad hoc on-demand distance vector (MAODV), adaptive demand-driven
multicast routing (ADMR), and multicast with ant colony optimization for VANETs based on
MAODV (MAV-MAODV), MOLSR.
a) Tree-based multicast routing protocols
A tree-based multicast routing protocol establishes and maintains a shared multicast
routing tree to deliver data from a source to receivers in a multicast group.
Disadvantage: Tree-based protocols function poorly on VANETs because they have to rebuild
the distribution tree frequently as a result of high node mobility, which leads to continuous
service disruptions.
b) The multicast optimized link state routing (MOLSR) protocol
MOLSR belongs to the source tree based family. It takes advantage of the topology
knowledge gathered by the OLSR. MOLSR is the extended version of OLSR protocol. A
multicast tree is built and maintained per pair (source, multicast group)in a distributed manner,
devoid of any central entity and offers shortest routes from the source to multicast group
members. When the topology changes are deleted, the trees are updated.

F) Mesh-based multicast routing protocols

A mesh-based multicast routing protocol sustains a mesh that consists of a connected
component of the network that contains all receivers in a group. Examples of mesh-based
multicast routing approaches are on-demand multicast routing protocol (ODMRP) and
destination-driven on-demand multicast routing protocol (DODMRP).

a) On-demand multicast routing protocol (ODMRP)

ODMRP is based on a forwarding group concept in which the multicast packets are
forwarded via scoped ooding by a subset of nodes. When a sender node S wants to join a
multicast group or has data to send, it periodically broadcasts a JOIN QUERY message to the
network. This message refreshes routing and group membership information because ODMRP
uses the soft-state approach to keep its multicast routing information. When a node that is not a
member of any multicast group receives a JOIN QUERY, the protocol checks if the node is a
duplicate; otherwise, the protocol stores the ID of the upstream node and then rebroadcasts the
message. When the message reaches a multicast group member, the receivers (R1, R2, and R3)
create an entry in its member table or update the correspondent entry if the message already
exists, and then broadcast the message to their neighbours in a JOIN REPLY message. Every
node that receives the message and reads its ID on the table knows that the message is on the
path, so the node establishes itself as a forwarding node (by setting the forwarding group ag)
and propagates a new JOIN REPLY message. This process creates a mesh that connects the
source to every multicast group member. When a node wants to leave the multicast group, it
simply has to stop sending JOIN QUERIES because, as mentioned, the ODMRP protocol uses
the soft-state approach through which a route that is not refreshed is deleted.
b) Destination driven on demand multicast routing protocol (DODMRP)
D-ODMRP is an extension of ODMRP. D-ODMRP aims to improve multicast
forwarding efciency. To achieve this goal, the path to reach a multicast destination (from
source to receiver) is biased toward directions that pass through another multicast destination. If
several paths are available, the protocol selects the least costly path. In other words, D-ODMRP
is employed to reduce the number of nodes to be added to the forwarding group.

G) Broadcast-based routing protocols

Broadcast-based routing is normally used in VANET to share information about road
conditions, the climate, and urgent situations with vehicles, and for advertising and
announcements. Broadcast-based routing protocols follow the simple broadcast method by
ooding, in which each node retransmits the message to other nodes. This process guarantees
the arrival of the message to all destinations but has a higher overhead cost. Furthermore, it is
suitable only for a smaller number of nodes in the network. A greater node density results in
more message broadcasts that lead to collisions, higher bandwidth utilization, and a decrease in
the overall performance of the system. Broadcast-based routing protocols include
BROADCOMM, UMB, DECA.
a) BROADCOMM
BROADCOMM is based on a hierarchal structure for a highway network. In
BROADCOMM, the highway is divided into virtual cells that move like vehicles. These cells
have a similar and equivalent optimal length, which facilitates the best possible transmission and
reception. The nodes in the highway are organized into two levels: the rst level includes all the
nodes in a cell, and the second level is represented by cell reectors, where few nodes are

located close to the geographical center of the cell. The cell functions for a specic interval of
time as the cluster head and handles emergency messages sent by the same members of the cell
or by a nearby neighbour. This protocol works in a similar manner as ooding-based routing
protocols for message broadcasting and routing overhead.
b) Density-aware reliable broadcasting (DECA)
DECA is a broadcasting routing protocol that does not need position knowledge in its
routing operation. DECA is more exible, which allows it to suit any operating environment
because it does not require position knowledge to operate.
2) Vehicle-to-infrastructure-based (V2I) routing protocols
VANET routing protocols improve their performance to a certain extent but suffer from
network partitioning because of high mobility. Current research tends to combine both
approaches (V2V, V2I) to obtain the desired result; a hybrid network is much more efcient
deploying communication infrastructure along the road increases the packet delivery ratio and
decreases the delay. These protocols can be categorized into static infrastructure-based and
mobile infrastructure-based routing protocols.
a)Static infrastructure-based routing protocols
The protocols in this category use RSUs in junctions and along the roads to route packets
to reachable vehicles within the transmission range. The use of RSUs for VANET provides two
prospective benets. In the rst case, the higher antenna height increases the range and
reliability of vehicular-to-infrastructure communications compared with IVCs. In addition, the
deployed RSUs are connected to a higher bandwidth and a more reliable backbone network to
provide trafc authorities with centralized access and to enable the conguration and
maintenance of these units.
b)Mobile infrastructure routing protocols
RSUs minimize the end-to-end delay signicantly .Protocols based on xed RSUs can
only provide connectivity in areas where they have been deployed. Areas where access points
are not installed are out of range, and thus, information cannot be collected or provided .Mobile
infrastructure-based routing protocols overcome the restriction of xed RSUs.

Comparison of Various Protocols

Protocols

Forwarding
method

Digital Map Virtual

Realistic
Requirement infrastructure Traffic
Requirements Flow

Recovery
Strategy

Scenario

Proactive
Protocols

Wireless
multi hop
Forwarding

No

No

Yes

Multi hop
Forwarding

Urban

Reactive
protocols

Wireless
multi hop
Forwarding

No

No

Yes

Carry and
Forward

Urban

Position
Based
Reactive
protocol

Heuristic
Method

No

No

Yes

Carry and
Forward

Urban

Delay
bounded
protocols

Carry and
Forward

No

No

No

multi hop
Forwarding

Sparse

Cluster
based
protocol

Wireless
multi hop
Forwarding

Yes

Yes

No

Carry and
Forward

Urban

Broadcast
Protocol

Wireless
multi hop
Forwarding

No

No

Yes

Carry and
Forward

Highway

Geo cast
Protocol

Wireless
multi hop
Forwarding

No

No

Yes

Flooding

Highway

Conclusion
Routing is an important component in vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and infrastructureto-vehicle (I2V) communication. This paper discusses various routing protocols of VANET.
Designing an efficient routing protocol for all VANET applications is very hard. Hence a survey
of different VANET protocols, comparing the various features is absolutely essential to come up
with new proposals for VANET. The performance of VANET routing protocols depend on
various parameters like mobility model, driving environment and many more. Through this
extensive survey, we can conclude that the main distinguishing factor among the various
VANET protocols is the means of identifying and organizing routes between the source and
destination pairs. A number of routing protocols have been proposed to solve the most critical
problems in VANET technology. Most of these protocols cannot address the highly dynamic
topology and frequently disconnected network, which are considered as major challenges.
Generally, position-based routing and geo-casting are more efcient than the other routing
protocols for VANETs because of environmental limitations.
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