Enhanced Spring Clustering in Vanets With Obstruction Considerations
Enhanced Spring Clustering in Vanets With Obstruction Considerations
Enhanced Spring Clustering in Vanets With Obstruction Considerations
Obstruction Considerations
Leandros A. Maglaras, Student Member, IEEE, Dimitrios Katsaros
Department of Computer & Communication Engineering, University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece
Abstract—Vehicular networks have a diverse range of applica- position and their relative mobility. The clusterhead change of
tions that varies from safety applications to comfort applications. Spring Clustering is relatively low and the overall performance
Clustering in VANETs is of crucial importance for addressing the of the method is stable to different topologies and transmission
scalability problems of VANETs. The performance of communi-
cation protocols is greatly influenced by the existence of vehicles ranges.
in the neighborhood; vehicles acting as obstacles change the Though, that protocol suffered from the fact that it treated
behavior of protocols when different density, speed and car sizes vehicles only as senders, relays and receivers and not as part of
scenarios are investigated since reliable communication range the environmental obstacles. A number of V2V measurements
among vehicles varies. The Enhanced Spring Clustering is a new have been performed to study the statistical properties of V2V
distributed clustering protocol, which forms stable clusters based
on vehicle dimensions. An investigation of the performance of the propagation channels [8], [9]. In [10] it is observed that in
Enhanced Spring Clustering in realistic environments is presented rush hours the received signal strength gets worse compared
confirming its superiority over the examined, competing cluster- to no traffic hours for the same part of an open road. These
ing protocol. observed differences can only be related to other vehicles
obstructing Line-of-Sight (LOS), since the system parameters
I. I NTRODUCTION remained the same during the measurements. Recent work
To enhance the safety of drivers, to provide a comfort- reported in [11], [12] showed that vehicles as obstacles have
able driving environment and to contribute to fuel economy, an important influence on the behavior of a VANET system.
messages for different purposes need to be sent to vehicles Highly realistic channel models [13] gives results that
through intervehicle communications. An important issue for are in very good agreement with the real world. However,
a VANET system is the broadcast storm problem that is present these models are computationally too expensive making them
in high density environments. Of the solutions proposed for impractical for extensive simulation studies. In [11] it is shown
scaling down networks with large numbers of nodes, network that the vehicles as obstacle have a significant impact on LOS
clustering is among the most investigated for mobile ad hoc obstruction in both the dense and sparse vehicular networks,
networks [1], [2], for sensor ad hoc networks [3], [4], and for therefore, shadow fading effects due to other vehicles are very
vehicular ad hoc networks [5], [6], [7]. important to be included in channel models.
The basic idea is that of grouping network nodes that are in
physical proximity. The subsequent backbone uses the induced
hierarchy to form a communication infrastructure that is func-
tional in providing desirable properties such as minimizing
communication overhead, choosing data aggregation points,
increasing the probability of aggregating redundant data, and
so on.
In Figure 1 an accident happens in a highway at a point
in time where traffic is intense, and we also suppose that
the vehicles approaching the place of accident are able to
“detect” the accident. The accident results in the highway Fig. 1. Illustration of an example where vehicle clustering is important.
being blocked. In such a situation density of vehicles increases
dramatically and a clustering method is necessary for the
proper dissemination of safety messages. A. Contributions
Spring Clustering which was introduced [5] forms stable The present work presents a new clustering protocol for
clusters based on force directed algorithms. The proposed VANETs, namely the Enhanced Spring Clustering protocol
method uses a mobility metric based on “forces” applied with incorporates vehicles Several scenarios are investigated
between nodes according to their current and their future in a highway environment where traces are created by out mo-
bility model. Mobility traces can also be loaded by SUMO [14]
Research supported by the project “REDUCTION: Reducing Environmental in order to investigate more complex scenarios. The reliable
Footprint based on Multi-Modal Fleet management System for Eco-Routing
and Driver Behaviour Adaptation”, funded by the EU.ICT program, Challenge communication range that is produced by simple diffraction
ICT-2011.7. models, depends on cars density, velocity and car’s dimensions
TABLE III
D ENSITY PER LANE .
60 placement RCR Ad
roof 80 10
40
inside 45 25
3 5 7
density TABLE IV
A NTENNA PLACEMENT.
density
75 24
40
Special role of vehicles. In order to evaluate how favoring
3 5 7
tall vehicles to become clusterheads affects Enhanced Spring
density
Clustering, we created scenarios of different vehicle distri-
butions. The average density is of λ = 5, the percentage
Fig. 8. Average cluster lifetime under OLOS of tall vehicles is 15% and all vehicles move to the same
direction. The simulations showed that favoring tall vehicles
in a realistic scenario, where reliable communication range is
The obstructing vehicles decrease reliable communication computed among each pair of nodes, makes Enhanced Spring
range which leads to what is called a lost link event, causing Clustering more stable (Figure 10).
the presence of often transition events to vehicles. Nodes that This is due to the fact that tall vehicles have biggest average
loose communication with their neighbors, due to attenuation reliable communication range (RCR) with their neighbors
by obstructing vehicles, leave their clusters, join other nearby compared to short vehicles, since the latter are more vulnerable
ones or form new clusters degrading the overall performance to diffraction losses. This phenomenon doesn’t show up when
of the clustering method. obstructing vehicles are neglected, since in that situation all
95 pairs of vehicles. The incorporation of heights in clusterhead
RCR tall vehicle
90 RCR Short Vehicle election makes the method more stable. More sophisticated
85 approaches where the relative heights of vehicles according to
Mean lifetime of Clusters
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Fig. 11. Height of clusterhead does not affect Spring Clustering’s perfor-
2011.
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of vehicles is taken into account when electing clusterheads;
this feature is in the heart of the Enhanced Spring Clustering.
This behavior is observed only in a realistic scenario where
reliable communication range is computed among each pair
of nodes instead of using a static communication range for all