Using Two Antennas to Reduce the Generated Overhead of Beacon-Based Protocols in VANET

In this work, a new routing protocol has been exclusively designed for reducing the generated overhead of beacon-based routing at the road segments of city environments in Vehicular Ad hoc Network. The main objective is to reduce the resulted overhead from the periodic exchange of beacon messages while preserving the same network awareness. To do so, the proposed protocol exploits the availability of two directional antennas to decrease the size of the beacons instead of their number. In particular, the proposed protocol modifies greedy forwarding at the road segments so the distance between a packet holder and its direct neighbors can be calculated using the neighbors’ received power instead of their current geographical position. Results have shown a decrease in both control and beacon overheads of the proposed protocol compared to other beacon-based protocols.