2010 International Conference on Electronics and Information Engineering (ICEIE 2010)
The Challenge of Broadcasting at Intersections in Vehicular Adhoc Networks
Samaneh Khakbaz
Iran University of Science and Technology
Tehran, Iran
Samaneh.khakbaz@gmail.com
Vehicular Adhoc Networks (VANETs) are new network
environment for intelligent transportation systems .One of the
fundamental services in VANET is broadcasting, that is a
challenging task due to different road topologies and network
conditions.One of its challenges is broadcasting at
intersections ,that because vehicles in different roads
constituting an intersections can affect on broadcast process of
other roads ,message may not be propagated in some
directions .In this paper we propose a method that by
classifying vehicles based on their location and the road they
move in solves this problem. Our method is simulated in NS2,
and simulation results show our method assures broadcasting
in all directions.
I. INTRODUCTION
Recently, mobile computing has become a hot topic in
research. Although computer and communication devices are
becoming smaller and more powerful, mobility still
challenges applications of mobile computing especially in
the area of ad hoc networking. A mobile ad hoc network
consists of mobile hosts that communicate via wireless links.
Due to mobility, the topology of the network changes
continuously and wireless links break down and reestablish
frequently. Moreover, an ad hoc network operates in the
absence of fixed infrastructure forcing the hosts to organize
the exchange of information decentrally. A prominent type
of mobile ad hoc networks is direct wireless communication
between vehicles in road traffic. In this network, the vehicles
are equipped with a computer controlled radio modem
allowing them to contact other equipped vehicles in their
vicinity. This type of network is named Vehicular Ad hoc
Network (VANET).We believe that the best applications of
inter-vehicle communication are to provide improved
comfort and additional safety in driving. Most of safety
applications require dissemination of information among
participating vehicles, so broadcasting is one of fundamental
services in these networks, which because of high
importance of exchanged messages especially in safety
applications require high reliability in delivering messages.
[1]
According to [2] more than 30% of all accidents happen
at intersections so broadcasting in intersection requires high
reliability. But at intersections, communication range of a
vehicle in one road may cover some vehicles in another road
and so, broadcasting of vehicles in one road can affect
broadcasting of vehicles in other roads that according to
978-1-4244-7681-7/$26.00 C 2010 IEEE V2-505
Mahila Dadfarnia
Amirkabir University of technology
Tehran, Iran
m-dadfarnia@aut.ac.ir
current broadcast mechanisms this communication range
overlap results in cancelling broadcast in some directions. In
this paper we demonstrate this problem and present a
broadcast method that overcomes it. In the proposed method
by classifying vehicles based on their location to the last
forwarder of message, we distinct between vehicles in
different roads constitutes intersection and omit effect of
broadcasting of vehicles in different roads on each other.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 presents related work on broadcasting in VANET;
section 3 describes intersection problem and proposed
method; section 4 presents the simulation model, the results
and the analysis of the proposed approach; the last section
concludes this paper.
II. RELATED WORKS
Early research on inter vehicle communication began in
the 1990s, inspired by research in the area of intelligent
transportation systems (ITS) initiated by the Department of
Transportation (DOT) in the U.S. and by the
PROMETHEUS project of the EUREKA program funded by
the European Commission. With the decreasing cost of
components for communication and positioning [e.g., global
positioning systems (GPS)] in the recent past, IVC became
more attractive [3]. Various research projects were initiated
[4][5][6], some explicitly focused on IVC, others considering
IVC as one of many possibilities for data distribution.
Among IVC systems ,Vehicular Adhoc Network
(VANET) that relay on direct communication of vehicles
with no need to any infrastructure has attracted a lot of
interest and because data dissemination is one of the
frequently used services in VANET ,several research groups
have explored the idea of data dissemination for it.
Flooding is suggested as the most common approach for
broadcasting without need to explicit neighbor information
[7] .Simulation shows that flooding results in severe
performance degradation, especially with high node density,
as a result of the broadcast storm problem [8]. Following the
high interest and potential of inter-vehicle communications,
several strategies for information dissemination tailored to
vehicular environments have been suggested that improve
simple flooding. In [9] and [12], proposed methods are based
on selection of the furthest receiver node as the next
forwarder of message .In [10] the proposed method assigns
the duty of forwarding the broadcast packet to only one
vehicle by dividing the road portion inside the transmission
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 2010 International Conference on Electronics and Information Engineering (ICEIE 2010)
range into segments and choosing the vehicle in the furthest
empty segment without need to priory topology information.
In [11] ,a selective message forwarding method is presented
that assigns each node a defer time based on the number of
common neighbors so that the node that has least common
neighbor is chosen as a forwarder .In [13], the IEEE 802.11
DCF mechanism is adapted for broadcasting in vehicular
networks by employing a distance-based waiting approach
before retransmissions which distributes the broadcast times
of neighboring nodes. In [14] a greedy forwarding approach
is used in order to reduce the number of redundant
transmissions. Another flooding based protocol is proposed
in [15] for broadcasting short packets in VANET which
limits the channel access rate of each vehicle by defining a
transmission window. But above methods don’t consider
unreliability that occurs in intersections.
In [16], the authors proposed an IEEE 802.11 based
Urban Multi-hop Broadcast protocol (UMB) for inter-vehicle
communication that consider broadcasting at
intersections .When vehicles arrive at an intersection ,
intersection broadcast sends packets in each road segment
constitutes this intersection using repeaters installed at the
beginning of each road segment. In this method reliability in
all direction at intersection is satisfied but in expense of
using infrastructure that conflicts with the concept of inter
vehicle communication that emphasizes not using additional
fixed devices also the proposed method is designed to
overcoming effect of tall buildings and shadowing at
intersections and doesn’t consider intersection problem that
we describe in this paper.
III. PROPOSED METHOD
When a vehicle broadcasts a message, all vehicles in its
communication range receive it, to deliver messages to nodes
out of its communication range, all receivers must
rebroadcast the message, this mechanism is called flooding
but simulations show causes a lot of redundant
retransmission. So it is proposed that instead of broadcasting
of all neighbors in direction of dissemination , only some
intermediate vehicles called relays be selected as forwarder
of message .The selection of forwarder must insure
delivering messages to most possible vehicles to inform
vehicles which did not received the message yet.
To select relays a retransmission scheduling scheme is
used. When a broadcast message is received, its
retransmission is scheduled for a future time, allowing for
the reception of additional duplicates before the actual
retransmission takes place. The scheduled retransmission can
be canceled at any time if seems its rebroadcast is
redundant .A transmission is said to be redundant if the node
is sufficiently confident that the area to be covered by its
retransmission has already been covered by the
retransmission of the previously received duplicates. This
mechanism is done as follows:
When a broadcast message is received, by knowing its
own position, a receiver determines the waiting time WT
depending on the distance d to the sender such that the
waiting time is shorter for more distant receivers (equation
V2-506
1).Thus, mainly hosts at the border of reception area take
part in forwarding the message quickly.
(1)
Where d: distance to the sender, MaxWT: maximum
waiting time, Range: transmission range
After the broadcasting of furthest vehicles, vehicles
which are between the main senders and relay upon
receiving of duplicates cancel their retransmission because
their retransmission range is covered by transmission range
of last senders and their retransmission will be redundant.
With this mechanism for reducing redundant transmission
only furthest nodes are selected as relay and rebroadcast the
message and other nodes when receive duplicates cancel
their transmission. This mechanism is bases of most
broadcasting methods but as we describe here it suffer
unreliability at intersections.
When there is an intersection in the path of the packet
dissemination because communication range of a vehicle in
one road may cover some vehicles in other roads,
broadcasting of vehicles in one road can affect broadcasting
of vehicles in other roads and cancel their broadcasting so
there is the probability of broadcasting stop in some roads.
We describe this problem in figure 1.
Road1
E A
C
B
Road2
Figure 1. Propagation stop in Road 1
In this figure the goal is broadcasting message to vehicles
behind of A. After broadcasting a message by vehicle A,
Vehicles B and C and E receive the message, and compute a
defer time based on their distance to A. Vehicle B is the
furthest receiver, so its defer time expires first and retransmit
the message ,after its retransmission, vehicle C and E receive
duplicates and to reduce redundancy cancel their
retransmission .In this condition in road 1 there isn’t no other
node that haven't been received duplicate and can be selected
as relay(a vehicle in hatched region), so transmission is
stopped and messages can’t be delivered to vehicles in this
way. Another example of this negative effect is shown in
figure 2.
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 2010 International Conference on Electronics and Information Engineering (ICEIE 2010)
Road2
B Class1
Road1 D
E F
A
G
H C
Road3
Figure 2. Propagation stop in Road1
In this figure ,After broadcasting of vehicle A, Vehicles
B,C,D,E,F,G,H receive message and compute a defer time
based on their distance to A .vehicle B is the furthest node,
so its timer expires first and rebroadcast the message ,After
its rebroadcasting upon receiving this duplicate message by
D,E,F,G,H that are in transmission range of B they cancel
their timer of broadcasting, among vehicles C and H that still
can rebroadcast the message ,vehicle C is selected as
forwarder and broadcast the message . As it is seen in figure
2 because there is no informed vehicle in road 1 that its
broadcast hasn’t been cancelled broadcasting is stopped in
that road.
To solve this problem we have proposed a broadcast
algorithm that is based on classifying vehicles according to
the way they move in and by this classification we limits
propagation effect to vehicles in same roads. In this
classification we classify them into six class, two main back
and forward groups and each of them into three classes.
1. Back Vehicles: Back vehicles as it is shown in figure 3,
are vehicles that cos of angle between a vector from their
position to the relay and vector of relay moving direction is
greater than0.
cos
Receiver node Relay node
Figure 3. Receiver is a back vehicle
For distinguish between back vehicles moving on
different roads constitute an intersection, we propose
classifying back vehicles into three classes .These classes are
shown in figure4.
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Class3
Sin
Sin B <
Class2
Figure 4. Classifying back vehicles into three classes
Class 1 is back vehicles that angle between a vector from
their position to the forwarder and vector of forwarder
moving direction is equal to 0.Class 2 are vehicles that Sin of
angle between a vector from relay to their position and
vector of relay moving direction is lower than 0.Class 3 are
vehicles that sin of angle between a vector from relay to their
position and vector of relay moving direction is greater than
0.
2. Ahead Vehicles: Ahead vehicles as it is shown in
figure5 are vehicles that that cos of angle between a vector
from their position to the relay and vector of relay moving
direction is lower than0.
Receiver node
cos
Relay node
Figure 5. Receiver is an Ahead vehicle
We have classified ahead vehicles into three classes
either. It is shown in figure 6.
Class3
Sin A > 0 Class1
Sin B < 0
Class2
Figure 6. Classifying back vehicles into three classes
Class1 are back vehicles that angle between a vector
from their position to the forwarder and vector of forwarder
moving direction is equal to 180 .Class 2 are vehicles that
Sin of angle between a vector from relay to their position and
vector of relay moving direction is lower than 0.Class 3 are
vehicles that sin of angle between a vector from relay to their
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 2010 International Conference on Electronics and Information Engineering (ICEIE 2010)

position and vector of relay moving direction is greater than intersection problem depends on different node densities so
0. to show effect of our proposed method, we have evaluated
By this classifying we have distinct between vehicles on two different road intersections with different node densities.
different roads constituting an intersection so we can limit For the first scenario we have considered an intersection
broadcast effects to vehicles in same classes. According to shown in figure 7. We assume an accident happens near the
these classification, after starting broadcast by a vehicle all intersection and the goal is propagating message to all back
receivers specify what class are belonging to, based on their vehicles in different roads constituting intersection (roads1
position and position of last relay that is included in and road2). Our measure to evaluate performance of our
broadcasted message. So every vehicle by specifying its method is number of informed vehicles.
class only if receives duplicate message from a vehicle in
same class cancels its retransmission and so broadcasting is
limited to vehicle in same class.
By applying this mechanism in figure 1, vehicle C
doesn’t cancel its rebroadcast, because it hasn’t received
duplicate message from a vehicle in same class and so
propagation could be continued in way 1. Also by applying
this mechanism in figure2, vehicles E, F, G upon receiving
duplicates don’t cancel their broadcast timer , and vehicle E
Figure 7. Scenario for Three ways Intersection
that is the furthest vehicle in way 1 is selected as a relay and
propagation continues in that way. To show effect of our proposed method we have
IV. SIMULATION compared its performance with selective flooding method in
[11] that doesn’t consider intersection trouble .Diagram 1
In this section, we discuss the simulation results obtained shows the number of informed vehicles in both methods .We
by our protocol and evaluate its performance. First though, have varied number of vehicles on the road between 25~350
we describe the simulation setup, including the scenario nodes. As it is seen, our method has delivered message to
utilized, and the communication strategies’ configuration vehicles on both roads but in selective flooding method when
A. Simulation Setup the network isn’t dense message haven’t been delivered to
vehicles on one road and so number of equipped vehicles is
The simulation has been implemented in NS2(Version rather half of our method. In high node density two methods
2.30) . In Our scenario roads are straight 5km long have equal performance that is because of high probability of
bidirectional with 2 lanes per direction. We determine the being vehicles in both roads that can be selected as relays.
distribution of vehicles and their velocity from Freeway
traffic model .In this model vehicles depart at different
position, and change speed as time goes periodically so the
higher speed vehicles may progress passing lower speed
vehicles. The speed steps that each vehicle uses are from
80Km/hr (22.22m/s) to 120Km/hr (33.33m/s). We assume
that transmission range of all vehicles is 200 Meter. We have
tested our method on different node density in different
intersection shapes. The parameters used for simulation are
listed in table [1].

TABLE I. SIMULATION PARAMETERS

Parameter Value Diagram 1.Comparision of our proposed method with flooding

Node Density 25~350
Vehicle Speed 80~120km/h For another scenario we have evaluated a four way
MAC Protocol IEEE 802.11 intersection showing in figure8.
Transmission Range 200m
Simulation Time Seconds
Define abbreviations and acronyms the first time they are
used in the text, even after they have been defined in the
abstract. Abbreviations such as IEEE, SI, MKS, CGS, sc, dc,
and rms do not have to be defined. Do not use abbreviations
in the title or heads unless they are unavoidable.
B. Performance Evaluations
Transmission range covering of vehicles on different
roads depends on shape of different intersections; also the Figure 8. Scenario for Four ways Intersection

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 2010 International Conference on Electronics and Information Engineering (ICEIE 2010)
The result for this scenario is shown in diagram 2.In this
scenario intersection trouble has caused propagation stop in
some roads either that has resulted in lower performance of [3]
selective flooding method than our proposed method that
consider intersection problem. As we except in high node [4]
density these two methods have equal performance.
[5]
[6]
[7]
Diagram 2. Comparison of our proposed method with selective flooding [8]
method
In this section we evaluated performance of our proposed [9]
protocol at intersection, and as we except we have achieved
to higher delivery ratio that is an important factor in VANET
applications
V. CONCLUSION AND OUTLOOK [10]
In this paper we presented an approach to broadcast a
message among highly mobile hosts like vehicles in road [11]
traffic. The proposed and implemented method considers
unreliability that can occur in propagating message in roads
that constitute an intersection. This unreliability happens
because vehicles in different road of an intersection can be in [12]
communication range of each other and according to many
recent methods broadcasting in one way may affect on
vehicles of another way and cancels their broadcasting that [13]
result in reducing delivery ratio. So we proposed a broadcast
method that by classifying vehicles into six classes based on
their location to the forwarder omits this negative effect, so [14]
that vehicles of each way only affect the broadcast of
vehicles in same class. Simulation results are generated for
[15]
different rates of equipped vehicles on different road
scenarios. All simulation runs proved that our method ensure
delivering message to vehicles on all roads especially in low [16]
node density that probability of having lost delivery is more.
Thus, our approach could indeed inform drivers on different
roads.
For future work we will consider other challenges that
affect delivery ratio of broadcasting like fragmentations,
bends, curve roads, different communication ranges of
vehicles.
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