Self-Assessment Based Clustering Data Dissemination for Sparse and Dense Traffic Conditions for Internet of Vehicles

Internet of Vehicle (IoV) is a sub class of vehicular ad hoc networks with more advanced cloud and Internet-enabled services. These networks offer various types of safety and infotainment services and provide comfortability and safety to passengers as well as to the drivers. Due to the high mobility of nodes, the nodes are out from its communication range and the information becomes outdated and causes link disconnections and packet dropping. Most feasible routing protocols are needed to provide in-time data communication, handle high mobility of nodes, dynamic topologies and unpredictable environments of these networks. In this paper, we proposed SACBR (Self-Assessment Cluster-based Routing) protocol in which the Cluster Heads (CHs) can communicate with other CHs. Every vehicle node initiates a self-assessment approach based on more appropriate routing metrics and elects the CH for every cluster and then collects the data from member nodes and further forward the data to other CHs. The CH is responsible to manage its own and member nodes' data forwarding process. The proposed protocol provides more stability and less overhead compared to the aggregation method where every node exchanges its data with a one-hop neighbor. Proposed protocol suites sparse and dense traffic scenarios where most of the time vehicle nodes are moving in platoons or snaking structures. The experimental results show the better performance of SACBR compared to state-of-the-art protocols.