Efficient clustering V2V routing based on PSO in VANETs

•Vehicle nodes with the same moving direction are defined.•Designing route particle, coding rules, iteration rules, and fitness function.•Proposing the methods which can improve routing efficiency signally.•The methods increase packet delivery ratio by 20% and decrease delay by 47% at best. To improve the efficiency of V2V, Efficient Clustering V2V Routing Based on PSO (Particle Swarm Optimization) in VANETs (CRBP) is proposed in this paper. First, vehicle nodes with identical moving directions are defined and the cluster heads are selected. Second, for the required routing optimization, the route particle and its velocity coding rules, iteration rules, and fitness function are designed. Thirdly, the methods that can signally improve the routing efficiency in the cluster and among clusters are proposed. Finally, SUMO and NS3 are used to simulate and analyze the performance of the CRBP. The simulation results indicate that the node numbers, node communication radius, and maximum hops between the cluster head and any normal node in its cluster have a major influence on the performance of CRBP; relative to CBVRP and QoS-OLSR, CRBP has a 20% increase in packet delivery ratio (PDR) and a 47% decrease in delay at best.