Routing in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks: Main Characteristics and Tendencies

The message routing in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) is an attractive and promising area for research. These networks do not have a central coordination, the nodes are mobile, and the topology is highly dynamic, making the routing process a big challenge, since it is responsible for ensuring message delivery with small overhead and delay. In the literature, there are several routing protocols that can be used in VANETs; in this way, the main objective of this work is to classify, discuss, and compare such protocols through a review of research in this field. The protocol classification is based on the following criteria: type of architecture and mode of operation. Moreover, this work emphasizes the potential of the application of bioinspired and bus-based techniques in the routing problem solutions, which has been revealed as a main tendency nowadays. Bioinspired routing protocols are based on the behavior of entities in the nature, and they are meant to work in a distributed mode, using mobile agents to find routes with specific features. In a parallel line of research, the differentiated behavior of urban transport vehicles suggests that a system that makes use of buses to create a communication infrastructure can perform better when compared to a system that does not distinguish between vehicles.