Journal of Network and Computer Applications ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎

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Journal of Network and Computer Applications

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Review

Information management in vehicular ad hoc networks: A review

M.S. Kakkasageri a,n, S.S. Manvi b
a
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Basaveshwar Engineering College, Bagalkot 587102, India
b
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Reva Institute of Technology and Management, Bangalore 560064, India

art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) is a highly mobile self-organizing network based on Vehicle-to-
Received 22 December 2012 Vehicle (V2V), Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) and hybrid architecture. Recently VANETs have gained a lot
Received in revised form of attention by industry and academia due to wide range of applications including safety, convenience,
18 April 2013
commerce, entertainment and infotainment. Information management requires technologies and
Accepted 16 May 2013
techniques for communication, fault tolerance, storage, coding, multi-modal interactions, gathering,
aggregation, validation, dissemination, etc. In VANETs, information can be classified into safety and non-
Keywords: safety information. Driver or vehicle safety information is required in applications offering intelligent
VANETs transport services like identification of road bends, traffic congestion, accident spots, collision warning,
Information gathering
environmental conditions, approaching vehicles, etc. The major concerns in safety applications are
Information aggregation
reliability, security, trust, real time delivery, and latency. This paper brings out current research efforts on
Information validation
Information dissemination information management techniques employed for safety related applications in VANETs, which includes
gathering, aggregation, validation and dissemination, and also provide directions for future research and
development.
& 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contents

1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Information management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Information gathering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1. On-board devices/sensor based gathering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2. Routing protocols based gathering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.3. Pull based gathering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.4. Other gathering mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.5. Open research problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4. Information aggregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.1. Centralized aggregation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.2. Fully distributed aggregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.3. Group/Cluster based aggregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.4. Hierarchical based aggregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.5. Other aggregation mechanisms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.6. Open research problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
5. Information validation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.1. Authentication based validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.2. Threshold based validation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.3. Other validation mechanisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
5.4. Open research problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6. Information dissemination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6.1. Forwarding based dissemination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

n
Corresponding author. Tel.: +91 9880 7659 60.
E-mail addresses: mahabalesh_sk@yahoo.co.in (M.S. Kakkasageri),
sunil.manvi@revainstitution.org (S.S. Manvi).

1084-8045/$ - see front matter & 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2013.05.015

Please cite this article as: Kakkasageri MS, Manvi SS. Information management in vehicular ad hoc networks: A review. Journal of
Network and Computer Applications (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2013.05.015i
2 M.S. Kakkasageri, S.S. Manvi / Journal of Network and Computer Applications ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎

6.2. Broadcasting based dissemination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

6.3. Push based dissemination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.4. Routing protocols based dissemination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.5. Other dissemination mechanisms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.6. Open research problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
7. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

1. Introduction
Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET) is a class of Mobile Ad Hoc
Network (MANET) and a component of Intelligent Transportation
Systems (ITS) (Li and Wang, 2007; Hartenstein and Laberteaux,
2008; Boukerche et al., 2008; Rybicki et al., 2007). Some of the
unique characteristics of VANET like geographically constrained
topology, unpredictable mobility and vehicle density, varying
channel capacity, etc., constitute VANET as a distinct research field
in MANETs (Manvi and Kakkasageri, 2010, 2008; Yu and Xu, 2010).
These characteristics pose several challenges with respect to
media access, physical communication, coding, routing, congestion
control, fault tolerance, multi-modal interactions, end-to-end data
transport, security, privacy, simulation and implementation plat-
forms, safety information management, etc. (Pigne et al., 2010;
Barberis et al., 2011; Schmidt et al., 2011; Wang et al., 2008; Manvi
et al., 2008a,b,c,d; Studer et al., 2007; Wu et al., 2010; de Fuentes
et al., 2009; Marmol and Perez, 2012; Leinmuller et al.; Ribagorda;
Stampoulis and Chai; Schoch et al., 2008; Toor et al., 2008). This
paper focuses on some of the information management techni-
ques, which is a pressing issue since VANETs have basically
evolved to provide safety measures and intelligent information
to drivers, public and passengers.
Information management can be discussed considering three
primary architectures for vehicular communication in VANETs:
Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V), Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I), and
hybrid architecture (Motsinger and Hubing). Recently, Vehicle-
to-Passenger/Pedestrian communication (V2P) is being discussed,
which can be possible fourth architecture. These architectures are
depicted in Fig. 1. Each architecture is explained as follows.
V2V communication is an important component of the ITS. It
enables the vehicle to communicate with other vehicles. Vehicles
may be located out of the range of line of sight (LOS) or even out of
the radio range if a multi-hop network is built among several
vehicles. V2V communication scenario is shown in Fig. 1(a). V2I
communication is the wireless exchange of information or data
between vehicles and highway/roadside infrastructure, intended
primarily to enable a wide range of safety, mobility, and environ-
mental benefits. Communication architecture for V2I is depicted in
Fig. 1(b). The vision of V2I communication is that a minimum level
of infrastructure will be deployed to provide the maximum level of
safety applications (Kone et al., 2010). Hybrid architecture inte-
grates both V2V and V2I communication architectures (Karim).
Hybrid VANET communication architecture scenario is given in
Fig. 1(c).
Vehicle-to-Passenger communication (V2P) allows direct,
instant, and flexible communication between moving vehicles
and roadside passengers (Liu et al., 2010). With pocket wireless
devices, passengers can easily join VANETs as roadside nodes, and
express their travel demands, e.g., taking a free ride or calling a
taxi via radio queries over VANETs (as shown in Fig. 1(d)). Once a
matched vehicle is found through the disseminated queries, the
driver can decide whether to provide corresponding services,
especially the carrying of passengers and goods. The research
work presents detailed investigation of challenges like vehicle
calling, establish a trip history model to predict vehicle movement,
and develop typical query dissemination scheme to match the
target vehicle. With a realistic travel survey and simulation, the
work proves that vehicle calling is effective and efficient in casual
carpooling and taxi calling.
Now, we will briefly present evolution of VANET concept and
technology. Initially, Inter-Vehicle Communication (IVC) was
started by JSK (Association of Electronic Technology for Automo-
bile Traffic and Driving) of Japan in the early 1980s (Luo and
Hubaux, 2008). Later, California Partners for Advanced Transporta-
tion TecHnology (PATH) (Hedrick et al., 1994) and Chauffeur of
Europe (Gehring and Fritz, 1997) have also demonstrated the
technique of coupling two or more vehicles together electronically
to form a train. In Europe, the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO) set up Technical Committee (TC) to develop
a framework for ITS including VANET standards from Institute of
Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), European Telecommu-
nications Standards Institute (ETSI), European Committee for
Standardization and the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)
(Booysen, 2011). European project CarTALK 2000 (Reichardt et al.,
2002) is investigating problems related to the safe and comfor-
table driving based on inter-vehicle communications. Several
major automobile manufacturers have already begun to invest in
inter-vehicle networks. Audi, BMW, Daimler Chrysler, Fiat, Renault
and Volkswagen have united to create a non-profit organization
called Car to Car Communication Consortium (C2CCC) which is
dedicated to the objective of further increasing road traffic safety
and efficiency by means of inter-vehicle communications. IEEE
also formed the IEEE 802.11p task group and standard 1609 which
focuses on providing Wireless Access for Vehicular Environment
(WAVE) (IEEE Standards Association; Rabadi, 2010; Wang, 2009).
The simTDResearch Project aims at safe and intelligent mobility
through researching and testing car-to-x communication and its
applications. Car-to-x communication is exchange of information
between vehicles and between vehicles and the infrastructure. In
simTD realistic traffic scenarios are addressed in a large-scale test
field infrastructure around the Hessian city of Frankfurt. SCOREF
Project improves traffic flow and road safety by democratizing the
use of communications technology infrastructure/vehicle and
vehicle/vehicle. DRIVing Implementation and Evaluation of C2X
Communication (DriveC2X) (DRIVing Implementation and
Evaluation of C2X Communication) technology in Europe carry
out the comprehensive assessment of cooperative systems. The
functions to be tested and evaluated on several European test sites
for cooperative systems are related to traffic flow, traffic manage-
ment, local danger alert, driving assistance, Internet access and
local information services.
In December 2003, the US Federal Communication Commission
(FCC) approved 75 MHz of spectrum for Dedicated Short Range
Communications (DSRC) and the resulting DSRC system is
expected to be the first wide-scale vehicular network in North
America (Rizvi et al., 2007; Laurendeau and Barbeau; Lerchbaumer
et al.). DSRC was conceived to provide architecture for nodes
within a vehicular network to communicate with each other and
with the infrastructure (Ye et al., 2011). In DSRC, subsequently

Please cite this article as: Kakkasageri MS, Manvi SS. Information management in vehicular ad hoc networks: A review. Journal of
Network and Computer Applications (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2013.05.015i
 M.S. Kakkasageri, S.S. Manvi / Journal of Network and Computer Applications ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎ 3

RSU Passengers
RSU

RSU

RSU
Road Side Unit (RSU) Pedestrian
RSU

Fig. 1. VANET architectures.

specialized as WAVE (also referred as IEEE 802.11p), (Global Table 1

Positioning System) GPS-enabled vehicles are equipped with on
board units, which can communicate with each other to propagate
information through V2V communications (Schmidt et al., 2010;
Qadri et al.).
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. We discuss
information management for VANETs in Section 2. Information
gathering, aggregation, validation and dissemination mechanisms
are presented in Sections 3,4,5,6 respectively. We conclude our
discussions in Section 7.
2. Information management
In this section, we discuss the concept and need of information
management especially safety information management. Auto
safety has evolved from basic seat belts and lighting to high-tech
safety features that can help drivers avoid accidents altogether.
Safe and secure transportation, where any one can move comfor-
tably and freely is the requisite for facilitating safety information
in VANETs. Safety is a top priority for drivers and passengers. A
safe vehicle is obviously a necessity to keep the people inside safe.
Drivers, passengers and pedestrians safety are major challenges for
automotive industry and governments in many countries. Increas-
ing accidents on the road is a major reason to take safety very
seriously. Safety information in VANETs is precisely associated
with time and geographical area where the information transfer
occurs. Hence safety information must be kept ‘sparkling’ (Zhu
et al., 2011; Sichitiu and Kihl, 2008; Andrisano et al., 2000; Pereira
et al., 1999).
Classification of VANET safety application services in VANETs
with some examples is as shown in Table 1. Driver services are
considered as the typical and most desirable group of applications
for VANETs with direct impact on road safety. Passenger services
can be enhanced by using road assistance and warning informa-
tion (Hafeez et al., 2010; Li et al., 2009). Information services
category contains applications that try to improve or simplify
driving by means of communication. VANETs are also intended to
support the work of public services such as police or emergency
recovery units.
In fact, the major design goal of VANETs is to enhance driving
safety and decrease traffic accidents (Zhang et al., 2008a,b; Killat).
Very essential components of safety information management are
gathering, aggregation, trust and security, validation and dissemi-
nation (Tamer et al., 2009; Bako and Weber; Paruchuri and
Durresi, 2005; Tsai et al., 2009). Now a day vehicles are equipped
with one or more communication or computation devices that are
capable of information gathering such as vehicle position and
speed, traffic density, accident occurrence, road conditions, etc.
The information from nearby vehicles as well as from far-away
vehicles received are to be aggregated in order to eliminate redun-
dant and duplicate data. This facilitates reduction of required amount
of information to be processed and also bandwidth consumption.
Overview of safety application services in VANETs.
Safety application Application examples
services
Driver services Curve speed warning, low bridge warning,
obstacle indication, vehicle-based road
condition warning, infrastructure-based road
condition warning, visibility enhancer,
work zone warning, wrong way driver warning,
blind spot warning, lane change warning,
intersection collision warning,
forward/rear collision warning,
rail collision warning, warning about
pedestrians crossing, blind merge warning,
pre-crash sensing, breakdown warning,
highway merge assistant, left turn assistant,
cooperative glare reduction, in-vehicle signage
Passenger services Post-crash warning, calling a taxi,
emergency break warning, enhanced
route guidance and navigation, map
download/update, parking spot locater
service, cooperative adaptive cruise
control, adaptive drivetrain management
Information services Notification of crash or road
surface conditions to a traffic
operation center, intelligent traffic flow
control, warning about violated
traffic lights or stop signals
Public services Electronic license plate, electronic brake lights
electronic drivers license, vehicle safety
inspection,
stolen vehicles tracking, approaching
emergency vehicle warning, emergency vehicle
signal preemption, emergency vehicle at scene
warning
The information received from other vehicles must be reliable,
authenticated and current. Hence the information needs to be
constantly verified and validated. Aggregated and validated safety
information is propagated/disseminated to vehicles. Figure 2
depicts a complete taxonomy of safety information management
mechanisms to be discussed in this paper. To the best of our
knowledge, we have listed and provided an overview of gathering,
aggregation, validation and dissemination mechanisms proposed so
far. The mechanisms are briefly explained in further sections.
3. Information gathering
To provide drivers with useful information, accessing data in
vehicular networks has become a major issue. Vehicles use
different kind of sensing devices to gather information about the
driver's environment (speed, acceleration, temperature, seats
occupations, etc.) in order to provide a safer, more efficient and
more comfortable driving experience (Nekovee, 2005). Recent

Please cite this article as: Kakkasageri MS, Manvi SS. Information management in vehicular ad hoc networks: A review. Journal of
Network and Computer Applications (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2013.05.015i
4 M.S. Kakkasageri, S.S. Manvi / Journal of Network and Computer Applications ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎

Mechanisms Methods Current Approaches

On−board devices/sensors based DGPS, MDC, EEBL

Gathering Routing protocols based RBVT, GeoVANET, XORi
Pull based Mutli agent system model
Others IP passing, CGP
Information management mechanisms in VANET

Centralized SLMA, VESPA, Structure−free

Fully distributed OLAP, Catch−Up

Aggregation Group/Cluster based CSP, CASCADE, RLSMP, BDI based,

Hierarchical based Probabilistic, Domain specific, ARIMA,
Others Syntactic, Semantic, SVD, In−network,
Message filtering model, AEMA,

Authentication based FastAuth, SelAuth, PoR, Pseudonym based,

AutoCore, RAISE
Validation Threshold based
Score based, TAA
Others Reliable reputation based,
Data cache based, NEMO

Forwarding based PCF, ICF, Utility driven, ATB

Broadcast based PACKs, Probabilistic, AutoNomos, CORNER
Dissemination Push based CVIS, BDI based
Routing protocols based Position based, MobEyes, SLOPE, LDW
Others LUD, FPAV, Multi agent system based,
Trust based
Fig. 2. Taxonomy of VANET information management mechanisms.

vehicles are equipped with sensors, GPS, navigation devices,
Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), etc. This enables to gather
information from the environment in order to provide a safer,
more efficient and comfortable driving experience.
To provide information for drivers and passengers, gathering
process is a major issue. Efficient information gathering mechan-
ism should exhibit the following characteristics: (1) Information
gathering process must not interfere with the network, e.g.,
drivers and passengers should not be asked to initiate/gather the
data. (2) Heterogeneous mobility patterns of vehicles must be
considered. (3) Routing of safety information in a highly dynamic
network where the nodes move very quickly. (4) Usually safety
information are not addressed to a particular destination. (5) Infor-
mation must rely on accurate and latest information of the
surrounding environment. (6) After certain distance and/or time,
information becomes irrelevant. (7) Information gathering algo-
rithms must be fault tolerant. (8) Efficient information gathering
algorithms without disruptions, even if some vehicles are
disconnected.
In the following sections, we discuss some of the research
works and open research issues that need to be addressed.
3.1. On-board devices/sensor based gathering
Traffic data collection platforms with servers exist to collect
GPS data points of vehicles for traffic monitoring. In traffic data
collection platforms, each vehicle is equipped with GPS modules
and the wireless communication interfaces, and the GPS data
sensed are sent to the server (Taleb and Benslimane, 2010). A
challenging issue in this context is that if significant number of
vehicles upload their GPS data points at the same time, wireless
network cannot offer enough network resources for simultaneous
network connections.
Critical or safety VANET applications demand high position
accuracy of vehicles. Radio-frequency identification (RFID)-
assisted accurate localization system makes use of Differential
Global Positioning System (DGPS) concept to improve GPS accu-
racy (Leea et al., 2012). In RFID assisted system, a vehicle obtains
two types data for localization: GPS coordinate from GPS receiver,
and physical position via RFID communication. Then, it computes
GPS error and shares it with neighbors to help them correct
inaccurate GPS coordinates.
A framework called as Model-based Data Collection (MDC) to
reduce the amount of data transmission and the number of
vehicles reporting their GPS data points is proposed in Hung and
Peng (2010). The MDC framework is executed at the server and
vehicle side collaboratively. In the vehicle side, given a series of
GPS data points, model functions are derived to represent the raw
GPS data points. Each vehicle reports some coefficients that
describe its movements instead of reporting all position informa-
tion. Vehicles move along with road segments that are usually a
set of line segments. Liner Regression (LR) algorithm is used to
determine a set of line functions to represent movements of
vehicles. By observing the spatial-temporal locality in traffic data,
Kernel Regression (KR) algorithm is developed to derive a set of
kernel functions to model a series of speed readings. With the

Please cite this article as: Kakkasageri MS, Manvi SS. Information management in vehicular ad hoc networks: A review. Journal of
Network and Computer Applications (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2013.05.015i
 M.S. Kakkasageri, S.S. Manvi / Journal of Network and Computer Applications ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎
spatial-temporal locality feature in traffic data, an in-network
aggregation mechanism are proposed to determine a set of groups
and for each group, only one vehicle needs to report traffic data,
thereby further reducing the number of simultaneous connections.
An emergency vehicle path clearing technique and the method
for getting real-time resource information are proposed in Rashid
et al. (2007). Emergency Electronic Brake Lights (EEBL) safety
application sends warning messages in case of an emergency
brake (Segata and Cigno). The EEBL application is integrated
within a Collaborative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) which uses
network-provided information to automatically brake the car if
the driver does not react to the warning. Moreover, an information
aggregation scheme is proposed to analyze the benefits of re-
propagation together with the consequent increase of network
load. This protocol is compared to a protocol without re-
propagation and to a rebroadcast protocol.
The requirements for an efficient Wireless Sensor Network
(WSN) architecture for gathering information in Intelligent Vehi-
cular Systems (IVSs) are discussed in Mouftah et al.. Hybrid Sensor
and Vehicular Network (HSVN) allows Wireless Sensor Networks
(WSNs) and VANETs to cooperate for providing road safety (Tripp
et al., 2012).
3.2. Routing protocols based gathering
Road-Based protocols using Vehicular Traffic information rout-
ing (RBVT) are presented for city-based VANET in Nzouonta et al.
(2009). RBVT protocols, i.e., a reactive protocol (RBVT-R) and a
proactive protocol (RBVT-P) create road-based paths consisting of
successions of road intersections that have high probability and
network connectivity among the vehicles for real-time vehicular
traffic information. Geographical forwarding is used to transfer
packets between intersections on the path. This mechanism
reduces the path's sensitivity to individual node movements. In
dense networks where the contention is maximum, the forward-
ing mechanism is optimized using a distributed receiver-based
election of next hops. This is based on a multi-criteria prioritiza-
tion function taking into account non-uniform radio propagation.
RBVT-R and RBVT-P protocols are compared with the protocols
of MANETs like Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV),
Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR), Greedy Perimeter
Stateless Routing (GPSR) and a protocol for VANETs, i.e., Geo-
graphic Source Routing (GSR). Performance of these protocols is
analyzed using two scenarios: an urban environment with obsta-
cles and an urban environment without obstacles. The results
show that the RBVT protocols perform better in terms of data
delivery and average delay. Considering the performance analysis,
RBVT-R is the better choice when throughput is the main require-
ment and RBVT-P if the VANET applications are delay sensitive.
Performance analysis of AODV, DSR, and Swarm intelligence
routing protocols in VANET environment are discussed in Manvi
et al. (2008a,b,c,d). GeoVanet, a distributed hash table (DHT) based
geographic routing protocol to ensure the sender of a query can
get a consistent answer is presented in Delot et al. (2011). In
GeoVanet, one driver is allowed to query information shared by
other vehicles. A query is disseminated in the network in a
bounded time. After computation on remote vehicles in the
VANET, the results are delivered to the vehicle that issued the
query. GeoVanet provides a solution for drivers to gather and
share data in VANETs. An experimental evaluation of GeoVanet
shows that up to 80% of the available query results are delivered to
the user.
Performance analysis of XOR-based flat routing protocols in
high mobility conditions, considering VANET formed in a highway
scenario is discussed in Oliveira et al. (2011). XORi, an improved
version of XOR modifies the protocol's information gathering
Please cite this article as: Kakkasageri MS, Manvi SS. Information management in vehicular ad hoc networks: A review. Journal of
Network and Computer Applications (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2013.05.015i
5
process to accommodate the specific dynamic nature of VANETs
topology.
A method to autonomously and cooperatively collect traffic jam
statistics to estimate arrival time to destination for each vehicle by
using inter-vehicle communication is proposed in Shibata et al..
Optimal next-hop selection in a route between two vehicles on a
highway scenario is proposed to enhance the route lifetime
(Kumar et al., 2006). In Johnson et al. (2006), problem of low-
latency content distribution (multicast streaming) to a dense
vehicular highway network from roadside info-stations using
efficient multi-hop V2V collaboration is explained.
3.3. Pull based gathering
Pull mechanisms allow users to send queries to a set of cars in
order to find the desired information. Safety information gathering
based on a pull strategy is discussed in Kakkasageri and Manvi
(2009). Multi agent system model is developed to pull the required
safety information from other vehicles in VANET. The crucial
challenge in pull strategy is to route the information towards the
requested vehicles in an aggressive VANET environment where the
vehicles may move very quickly.
A driver warning system in which damaged vehicles send
warning messages, and the rest of the vehicles make diffusion of
the warning messages is presented in Martinez et al.. Diffusion of
warning messages sent by damaged vehicles is done in order to
inform the rest of vehicles in a scenario that uses 802.11p-based
VANETs. The main objective is to send vehicle safety messages
with high reliability and low delay. A sensibility study is per-
formed in this work to evaluate the impact of variation in the
existing advertisement system of vehicles.
3.4. Other gathering mechanisms
In VANETs, usually vehicles have short connections to the
Internet using wireless access points (AP). Major part of the
connection time is required for acquiring an Internet Protocol
(IP) address via Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). IP
passing protocol can be used to reduce the overhead of obtaining
an IP address (Arnold et al., 2008). In IP passing protocol, a
vehicle's usable connection time is increased by reducing IP
acquisition time and overhead.
Clustered Gathering Protocol (CGP) is a cross-layered protocol
based on hierarchical and geographical data gathering (Salhi
et al.). CGP gathers data from all nodes in the VANET in order to
offer the following different kind of ITS services: (1) A real-time
traffic information service by gathering all node's positions and
velocities. (2) Geographical localization service for customers who
want to follow vehicles mobility (fleet management). (3) A parking
lot's availability service by detecting empty spaces in parking lots.
(4) Warning messages in a specific area, when an unusual event
happens, e.g., a sudden speed decrease of several vehicles. (5) A
real-time fuel consumption and pollution indicators. (6) surveil-
lance applications where nodes make videos of the road and
detect and save the registration plates of vehicles around.
A model to predict parking lot occupancy based on information
exchanged among vehicles is discussed in Caliskan et al. (2007). The
dynamics of multi-hop emergency message dissemination in VANETs
is discussed in Resta et al. (2007). A comprehensive analysis of
application requirements and difficulties of local danger warning in
VANETs is described in Adler and Strassberger (2006).
Table 2 presents functional summary of above discussed informa-
tion gathering mechanisms based on the following criteria: objec-
tives, characteristics, and assumptions. The performance comparison
of the gathering protocols in terms of quality, priority, success ratio,
delay, mobility and response time is given in Table 3.
6 M.S. Kakkasageri, S.S. Manvi / Journal of Network and Computer Applications ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎

Table 2
Summary of gathering protocols.

Protocol Mechanism Architecture N/W Information type

type

Traffic chaos reduction (Paruchuri and Durresi, On board devices/sensor based vehicles V2V Dense Emergency service vehicle
2005) information
EEBL (Tsai et al., 2009) On board devices/sensors based V2V Sparse Emergency brake messages
messages
RBVT (Leea et al., 2012) Routing protocols based V2V Dense Real time vehicular traffic
GeoVanet (Rashid et al., 2007) Routing protocols based V2V Dense Query based safety information
Multiagent model (Manvi et al. 2008a,b,c,d) Pull based V2V Dense Vehicle safety information
Driver Warning System (Delot et al., 2011) Pull based V2V Dense Warning messages
CGP (Shibata et al.) Cross layered and clustered V2V, V2I and Hybrid Dense Traffic density unusual traffic
behavior, etc.

Table 3
Performance of gathering protocols.

Protocol Gathered data Safety information Gathering success Gathering Mobility Query response
quality priority ratio delay consideration time

MDC (Bako and Weber) High Low Medium Low Low Medium
Traffic Chaos Reduction (Paruchuri and Low High High Medium Low Low
Durresi, 2005)
EEBL (Tsai et al., 2009) Medium Low High Low Medium High
RBVT (Leea et al., 2012) Low Medium High High Medium Low
GeoVanet High Medium High High High Low
(Rashid et al., 2007) High Low High Medium High Low
Multiagent model (Delot et al., 2011) Medium High High High Low Low
Driver Warning System (Oliveira et al., 2011) High Low High Medium Low Low
CGP (Shibata et al.) High Medium Low Medium High Low

3.5. Open research problems
Information gathering continues to be a strong research area of
focus by VANET researchers because a significant number of
messages transmitted in VANETs are safety messages (Zeadally
et al., 2012). Novel information gathering algorithms are required
to address the following specific issues:
On-board devices/sensor based gathering: VANET can be estab-
lished by equipping vehicles with onboard devices and sensors.
Unlike traditional wireless networks, VANETs are not subject to
the issues like memory, processing, storage, and energy limita-
tions. But the factors like variation in network density, volume of
generated data and mobility of vehicles make it infeasible to adopt
traditional wireless network solutions directly. In this regard,
some specific issues that need still better solutions are as follows:
 The onboard devices/sensor information arriving from different
vehicles can be combined in order to eliminate redundancy,
minimize the number of transmissions, and improve the
quality of the onboard devices/sensor information.
 Onboard devices/sensor should have the protocols with the
intention of ‘low channel utilization’ to keep the vehicle system
accessible for safety messages.
 Onboard devices/sensor must guarantee for accurate detection
of information-type, vehicle location, dangerous road condi-
tions, etc., and maintain reliable communication connectivity
when the network density is low.
 Sensors deployed at Road Side Units (RSUs) should buffer and
deliver the information to the passing vehicles in a timely
fashion.
 Intelligent on board devices and sensors are needed for
vehicles to support data-oriented queries by assigning certain
attributes like information-type, vehicle location, etc. This
minimizes the processing time of onboard devices and sensors.
Routing protocols based gathering: There are some routing pro-
tocols intended for communication between vehicles along with
safety information gathering. VANETs offer unique challenges for
routing combined with gathering because of its inherent character-
istics like mobility, short link lifetime, etc. The research community
has identified many routing strategies for VANETs, but there is a
need to develop the gathering based routing protocols for VANETs.
Some of the specific open research issues are as follows:
 Routing protocols integrating with information gathering
require accurate geographic information. Hence the collected
information should be precise.
 Along with all routing mechanism issues, routing protocols
should gather geographic information of the vehicles which are
close to destination in order to forward data packets and make
efficient communication.
 Routing protocols combined with information gathering task
have some problems when evaluated for urban scenario,
because the existence of obstacles in the city environments
may interrupt the communication. Hence information gather-
ing mechanism along with the routing should not be affected
by such type of obstacles.
 Prioritization of safety information messages is a major issue in
routing based gathering. Source vehicle should forward the
safety information along the shortest path to all the destina-
tions. Due to the vehicle dynamic mobility factor, the distance
from a source vehicle to destination vehicle will no longer be
the same as that obtained by traditional shortest path routing.
 Selection of efficient forwarding vehicles is also a major issue
for safety information gathering in VANETs. Although involving
all the neighboring vehicles with calculated cost to the destina-
tion vehicle seems the most effective way, the overhead is
expected. In dense VANETs, this overhead might be higher due
to repeated transmissions.

Please cite this article as: Kakkasageri MS, Manvi SS. Information management in vehicular ad hoc networks: A review. Journal of
Network and Computer Applications (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2013.05.015i
 M.S. Kakkasageri, S.S. Manvi / Journal of Network and Computer Applications ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎
Pull based gathering: Pull based information gathering models
allow users to send queries to a set of vehicles to find the desired
information. In order to have such query processing scheme, some
of the challenges need to be addressed are as follows:
 Pull model stands on request-response strategy. For such
strategy main challenge to be addressed is routing different
results towards their recipient in VANET where the nodes move
very quickly. Push model should ensure that the sender of a
query can get a consistent answer instantaneously, i.e., within a
bounded time.
 Intelligent searching mechanisms or query languages for quer-
ied or interested information among large set of vehicles are
needed.
 It is desired that all the vehicles in VANET need to be smart, i.e.,
vehicles should be able to understand, route, and process the
queries.
 Pulling of safety information in very sparse and in highly dense
networks is a challenging task. Efficient pull based information
gathering protocol needs the considerations of active vehicles,
road scenario, vehicle mobility, etc. These factors have a greater
impact on scalability.
 After receiving a query message, the vehicle must be capable to
check the validation of a query message sent by a vehicle. Along
with validation, pull based models critically need the security
and privacy preservation mechanisms like authentication, data
Integrity, anonymity, and availability.
 Wireless bandwidth availability in VANETs is scarce. Usually
safety information gathering process based on pull mechanism
requires high bandwidth. Considering VANET specific con-
straints, pull based safety information gathering mechanisms
for applications like forward/backward collision warnings, lane
change assistance, etc., must be aware of channel utilization.
Because, these kind of applications require frequent gathering,
as they have bounded time.
4. Information aggregation
The vehicles have to pass on the information sent by the
neighbors to other neighbors in its coverage area. This increases
the number of packets to be sent by a vehicle in case if packets
contain similar information. Therefore, information aggregation
techniques are applied to reduce such overheads. Information
aggregation is an interesting approach, which reduces the number
of packets transmitted drastically by combining several informa-
tion related to the same event into one aggregated information.
Aggregation allows the vehicles to merge, update or delete some
information because they might be duplicated, similar or expired
(Diaconu). For example, the records about two vehicles can be
replaced by a single record with little error, if the vehicles are very
close to each other and move with relatively the same speed.
Requirements, concept of a generic modeling approach and
identification of aggregation challenges are discussed in Dietzel
et al., 2010a,b. Drawback of aggregation mechanism is reduction in
information inaccuracy from the on-board sensors. Basically,
aggregation technique is a way of optimizing bandwidth/storage
usage. Information aggregation is a method of integrating different
information sensed by different vehicles, with the compromise of
information accuracy. Because of the high mobility of vehicles and
the large number of vehicles in VANET, aggregation mechanism is
rendered as a difficult task. Some of the specific characteristics of
information aggregation mechanisms with respect to the vehicular
networks context are as follows. (1) The aggregation process
should not be costly with respect to the computational and
communication cost. (2) The loss of information occurring because
of the aggregation should be nominal. (3) Aggregated information
Please cite this article as: Kakkasageri MS, Manvi SS. Information management in vehicular ad hoc networks: A review. Journal of
Network and Computer Applications (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2013.05.015i
7
should reduce the probability of redundant or duplicate informa-
tion. (4) Aggregation process should integrate the information
according to the location of vehicle and time of information
generated. (5) Aggregation mechanism should be incremental in
nature. (6) Aggregated information should be exchangeable.
In the following sections, we discuss some of the research
works on aggregation and open research issues that still need to
be addressed.
4.1. Centralized aggregation
In centralized aggregation, a single node aggregates data
centrally (Koubek et al., 2010a,b). This automatically leads to
excessive communication overhead near the central node. some
of the approaches for centralized aggregation are as follows. Event
driven structure-less message aggregation (SLMA) for safety-
relevant VANET applications is presented in Liu and Chigan
(2010). SLMA addresses information accuracy by reducing com-
munication overhead with limited delay. SLMA uses multiple level
parallel fusion model to provide high reliability and to eliminate
packet exchanges for aggregation structure formation and main-
tenance. Bayesian fusion algorithm is adopted to effectively
achieve precise event detection on the road.
Vehicular Event Sharing with a mobile P2P Architecture
(VESPA) based data aggregation in VANETs is proposed in Defude
et al. (2008). Basically VESPA is used to process and disseminate
any type of event like accidents, emergency braking, available
parking spaces, etc. VESPA based aggregation scheme focuses on
how to exploit data exchanged among vehicles to produce knowl-
edge to be used later on by drivers. The solution given in the work,
aggregates the data once it becomes obsolete. This method helps
the vehicles when no relevant data has been communicated by
neighboring vehicles.
Structure-free aggregation scheme that focuses on flexible
decision metrics is proposed in Dietzel et al. (2009). Fuzzy logic
rules are employed to base aggregation decisions on qualitative
metrics, such as induced quality loss due to aggregation. It is not
necessary to define aggregate structures like fixed road segments,
a hierarchy or a group of nodes. Hence the scheme is structure-
free. But the aggregation scheme allots more bandwidth to
stretches with high state entropy.
4.2. Fully distributed aggregation
Each node aggregates data locally in a fully distributed aggre-
gation mechanism. Fully distributed aggregation is very robust but
leads to exponentially growing communication overhead with
increasing numbers of nodes. Online analytical processing (OLAP)
of logistic regression analysis for raw data is proposed in Xi et al.
(2009). Compression of the data and reconstruction of logistic
regression models for OLAP query without accessing the raw data
is discussed in this work. OLAP based compression scheme
compresses each base cell into a small compressed data block
with essential information to support the aggregation of logistic
regression models. OLAP based aggregation scheme supports real-
time logistic regression analysis of stream data.
An adaptive forwarding delay control scheme called as Catch-
Up is proposed in Yu et al. (2012). Catch-Up scheme dynamically
changes the forwarding speed of nearby reports, provides a better
chance to meet each other and be aggregated together. The Catch-
Up scheme is designed based on a distributed learning algorithm.
Each vehicle learns from local observations and chooses a delay
based on learning results. Catch-Up scheme simulation results
show that the number of redundant reports can be reduced to
achieve a good trade-off between delay and communication
overhead.
8 M.S. Kakkasageri, S.S. Manvi / Journal of Network and Computer Applications ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎
4.3. Group/Cluster based aggregation
In group/cluster based aggregation, multiple nodes aggregate
data in different groups. Group/cluster based aggregation is high-
lighted as being the most suitable strategy for VANETs because it
reduces data communication overhead by aggregating data in
parallel. Clustering or grouping of vehicles in VANET is an
excogitate mechanism, as it improves the system performance
and makes the VANET topology less dynamic (Fan et al., 2006).
Grouping of vehicles with similar mobility patterns by multi-
metric Cluster Head (CH) election technique is proposed in
Rawshdeh and Mahmud. This technique can be used by vehicles
to determine their suitability on the fly to lead the cluster. This
approach takes the speed in addition to the location and direction,
into consideration to accurately identify nodes showing similar
mobility pattern and group them in one cluster. Clustering of
vehicles involves in the following phases: (1) Partitioning the
network into minimum number of clusters. (2) Vehicles are
distributed in the cluster based on their mobility pattern similar-
ity. (3) Multi-metric election technique is used by vehicles to
determine their suitability to become the CH.
Multiagent driven dynamic clustering scheme for aggregation
of safety information in VANETS by considering vehicle speed,
direction, connectivity degree to other vehicles and mobility
pattern is proposed in Kakkasageri and Manvi and Kakkasageri
and Manvi (2012). Cluster members are identified based on
vehicle's relative speed and direction for dynamic clustering.
Cluster head is selected among the cluster members based on
stability metric derived from connectivity degree, average speed
and time to leave the road intersection. Cluster head predicts
future association of cluster members based on mobility patterns.
The announcement of cluster mobility pattern to all cluster
members is made by cluster head. The cluster members with
similar mobility pattern can reconnect with cluster head after
passing an intersection of the lane.
Cluster-based Self-organizing Protocol (CSP) and Clustered
Gathering protocol (CGP) (proactive and reactive protocol) are
discussed in Cherif et al. (2009). CSP and CGP are cross layer and
structured intelligently in the VANET in permanent manner by
portioning roads into adjacent segments seen as geographic fix
clusters. The proactive solution, CSP, can be used for security issues
or to provide a large panoply of services. The reactive solution,
CGP, is mainly used to perform data collection and aggregation.
Cluster-based Accurate Syntactic Compression of Aggregated
Data in VANETs (CASCADE) forms vehicles into clusters (Ibrahim
and Weigle, 2008a,b). The cluster size estimates frame size used to
distribute aggregated data and the distance ahead vehicles are
aware of. The main contribution of this work is to optimize the
cluster size to balance the trade-off between local view length and
expected frame size. But CASCADE does not consider the vehicles
traveling in the opposite direction. Extension of CASCADE, i.e.,
accurate aggregation scheme of highway traffic information
VANETs is discussed in Ibrahim and Weigle (2008a,b)). CASCADE
makes efficient use of the wireless channel while providing each
vehicle with data that is highly accurate, represents a large area in
front of the vehicle, and can be combined with aggregated data
from other vehicles to further extend the covered area.
Region-based Location Service Management Protocol (RLSMP)
makes use of aggregation and geographical clustering to minimize
the number of location updates and querying messages for location
management of vehicles (Saleet and Basir, 2007). RLSMP improves
network scalability but suffers with the problem of increased number
of packet collisions, retransmissions and longer delays.
Safety information aggregation in VANETs using vehicle beliefs
is presented in Kakkasageri and Manvi (2011a,b). This scheme
operates over logically clustered vehicles by using a set of static
Please cite this article as: Kakkasageri MS, Manvi SS. Information management in vehicular ad hoc networks: A review. Journal of
Network and Computer Applications (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2013.05.015i
and mobile agents. Aggregation of vehicle beliefs is done as
follows: (1) Generation of beliefs based on collected safety
information. (2) Aggregating the beliefs to develop desire using a
regression technique. (3) Revision of desire for better quality of
aggregation. (4) Finalizing the intention based on revised desire.
Message aggregation and group communication for safety
related applications in VANETs are presented in Raya et al.
(2006). In this approach, message is securely disseminated to
selected vehicles who share a similar view of their environment.
With secure aggregation, the information dependability is also
increased. Grouping of several safety related messages provides
the receiver with more evidence concerning a given event. Group
communication with secure aggregation scheme does not provide
a complete solution for aggregation, but concentrates on security
aspects.
4.4. Hierarchical based aggregation
A hierarchical data aggregation scheme for aggregating free
parking slots using globally known map data for segmentation is
proposed in Lochert et al. (2007). Major benefit of using Flajolet–
Martin sketches in the work is to achieve a probabilistic but
duplicate insensitive sum of free parking spaces. Aggregates can
therefore be arbitrarily combined and re-combined without count-
ing free parking slots multiple times.
Limited bandwidth and minimal initial deployment challenges
for VANET based traffic information are studied in Lochert et al.
(2008). A domain specific aggregation scheme by means of a
multi-layer hierarchy of approximations of the road network is
presented in order to minimize the required overall bandwidth. A
genetic algorithm is proposed to identify good positions for static
roadside units in order to cope with the highly partitioned nature
of a VANET in an early deployment stage.
Aggregation scheme for traffic flow prediction based on the
moving average (MA), exponential smoothing (ES), autoregressive
MA (ARIMA), and neural network (NN) models is discussed in Tan
et al. (2009). The MA, ES, and ARIMA models present predictions
of the three relevant time series. The predictions that result from
the different models are used as the basis of the aggregation stage.
4.5. Other aggregation mechanisms
Two methods for aggregation, syntactic aggregation and
semantic aggregation have been proposed in Picconi et al.
(2006). Syntactic aggregation reduces the overhead of message
headers and semantic aggregation is information-specific and
saves more bandwidth at the cost of loss of information. The
solution to detect attackers that purposely disseminate erroneous
aggregated records is provided in the work. This work limits in
consideration of the events only for information about vehicles
like speed, location, etc., and not for events such as accidents.
Security mechanisms for semantic data aggregation that are
suitable for use in VANETs are reviewed in Dietzel et al. (2010a,b).
Super Vehicle Detection (SVD) algorithm for speed and location
data aggregation for all the vehicles within zone to ensure an
accurate representation of the network is discussed in Miller
(2008). Theoretical scalability bound for aggregation protocols in
VANETs is discussed in Scheuermann et al. (2009). In this work,
authors have shown that the data rate will reduced asymptotically
faster than the squared distance to the information source.
In-network aggregation is an efficient scheme for privacy-
sensitive information only available in the direct vicinity of
vehicles instead of communicating it over larger areas. A metric
based framework to measure privacy enhancements provided by
in-network aggregation is discussed in Dietzel (2011). Message
diffusion in VANETs using self organization and message benefit
 M.S. Kakkasageri, S.S. Manvi / Journal of Network and Computer Applications ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎ 9

Table 4
Summary of aggregation protocols.

Protocol Mechanism Architecture N/W type Information type

SLMA (Resta et al., 2007) Centralized aggregation V2V Dense Limited delay tolerable safety messages
VESPA (Adler and Strassberger, 2006) Centralized aggregation V2V Dense Accidents, emergency braking, available parking
spaces, etc.
Structure free aggregation (Zeadally et al., 2012) Centralized aggregation V2V Dense Any type of information
Catch-Up (Dietzel et al., 2010a) Fully distributed aggregation V2V Dense Any type of information
CASCADE (Yu et al., 2012; Fan et al., 2006) Group/cluster based V2V Dense Any type of aggregated messages
aggregation
RLSMP (Rawshdeh and Mahmud) Group/cluster based V2V/V2I Dense Location updates and querying messages
aggregation
BDI model based aggregation (Kakkasageri and Group/cluster based V2V Dense Accidents, heavy rain, fog, etc.
Manvi) aggregation
Probabilistic aggregation (Cherif et al., 2009) Hierarchical based Hybrid Sparse and Free parking slots
aggregation dense

Table 5
Performance metrics of aggregation protocols

Protocol Communication Aggregation Aggregation Channel Mobility

overhead delay accuracy utilization consideration

SLMA (Resta et al., 2007) Medium Medium High High Low

VESPA (Adler and Strassberger, 2006) Low Low High Medium Low
Structure free aggregation (Zeadally et al., 2012) Medium Low Medium Low High
Catch-Up (Dietzel et al., 2010a) Low Low Medium Medium Medium
CASCADE (Yu et al., 2012; Fan et al., 2006) High Medium Medium High High
RLSMP (Rawshdeh and Mahmud) Medium Medium Low High High
BDI model based aggregation (Kakkasageri and High Medium Medium High High
Manvi)
Probabilistic aggregation (Cherif et al., 2009) Medium Medium High Medium Low

determination techniques are presented in Adler et al. (2006).
Utility evaluation concept for message content to select the
messages most relevant to the overall network is used. In the
paper, authors have shown that messages with higher relevance
have a higher chance of being sent.
In Kim et al. (2010), authors present filtering process of mal-
icious messages transmitted by a minority of misbehaving vehicles.
Message filtering model leverages multiple complementary sources
of information to construct a multi-source detection model such
that drivers are only alerted after some fraction of sources agree.
Filtering model is based on a threshold curve and a Certainty of
Event (CoE) curve. A threshold curve implies the importance of an
event to a driver according to the relative position, and a CoE curve
represents the confidence level of the received messages. An alert is
triggered when the event certainty surpasses a threshold.
System for vehicle-generated announcements is developed in
Viejo et al. (2009). This system is secure against external and
internal attackers attempting to send fake messages. Internal
attacks are thwarted by using an endorsement mechanism based
on multi-signatures. This system also ensures that vehicles volun-
teering to generate and/or endorse trustworthy announcements
do not have to sacrifice their privacy. Aggregated emergency
message authentication (AEMA) scheme to validate an emergency
event is developed in Zhu et al. (2008). AEMA makes use of
syntactic aggregation and cryptographic aggregation techniques to
reduce the transmission cost, and adopt batch verification techni-
que for efficient emergency messages verification.
Aggregation of warning data if several messages present the
same event is discussed in Eichler et al. (2006). This work makes
use of revocation messages, i.e., when a vehicle does not detect a
hazard when entering an area which is dangerous according to a
stored aggregate. A role-differentiated cooperative deceptive data-
detection mechanism, i.e., RD4, to detect and filter false data in
VANETs is given in Sha et al. (2010). In RD4, when a sensor is
deployed, it picks up a role from the role set based on several
sensing features. RD4 focuses only on the data quality without
security features.
An aggregation scheme to aggregate any type of information
like road incident, information related to driving more comforta-
ble, etc., is proposed in Molina-Gil et al. (2010). For aggregation
different aspects of nodes functionality are considered. Vehicles on
the road that find an obstacle automatically generate a warnings
message. This work also provides the security feature for the
aggregation by combining the signatures generated by different
vehicles to alert about the same problem.
Summary of current approaches for aggregation schemes in
VANET is provided in Table 4. Performance metrics to evaluate
aggregation protocols are summarized in Table 5.
4.6. Open research problems
Information aggregation mechanisms dramatically reduce the
transmission cost. Recently, information aggregation in VANETs
has attracted much research attention. But the issues like con-
sideration of real world VANET scenario, efficient aggregator
vehicle selection, scalability, road scenario, trade-off between
delay and redundancy are still remained as unsolved issues.
Specific research considerations are as follows.
Centralized aggregation: Designing efficient centralized aggre-
gation algorithms for VANETs is quite difficult, because of the
following specific VANET characteristics: vehicle connectivity with
neighbors, location of the vehicle, vehicle aggregation capability
and reliability, etc. Some of the centralized aggregation issues
need to be tackled are as listed below:
 Intelligent aggregation algorithms at the central aggregator are
necessary to trade off the increased delay for reduced
redundancy.

Please cite this article as: Kakkasageri MS, Manvi SS. Information management in vehicular ad hoc networks: A review. Journal of
Network and Computer Applications (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2013.05.015i
10 M.S. Kakkasageri, S.S. Manvi / Journal of Network and Computer Applications ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎
 Safety information is delay sensitive. In order to aggregate the
two safety information, they must be delivered to central
aggregator vehicle at the same time.
 Selection of aggregator vehicles that offer the maximum
‘aggregation benefit’, is also a pressing issue for efficient safety
information aggregation task.
 For VANETs, the road scenarios are either city scenario or
highway scenario. Highways typically form a multi-lane road,
which has very large segments. Mobility of the vehicles in
highway scenario is more than that of the city scenario. The
aggregation algorithms designed for city scenario may not be
suitable for highway scenario, because of the network life time.
Hence efficient and quick decision centralized aggregation
algorithms are necessary for highway scenario based VANETs.
Fully distributed aggregation: In VANETs, information is usually
‘periodic’ event-driven messages that are the result of the aware-
ness of an unsafe situation, not safety-of-life, during a certain time.
For distributed aggregation in sparse VANET scenarios, safety
information will be repeatedly broadcasting in order to improve
reliability and connectivity. This leads to the aggregation of
frequently disseminated data. Fully distributed aggregation algo-
rithms that are able to improve the scalability of the network and
avoid redundant repetitions are critically required for VANETs.
Group/cluster based aggregation: Most of the recently proposed
VANET clustering mechanisms are extracted from Mobile Ad-hoc
Networks (MANET). But, these mechanisms consider only position
or direction regardless of the speed difference among vehicles.
Thus there is a need of re-investigating the clustering mechanisms
for VANETs by considering the speed, location, and direction of
vehicles.
Hierarchical based aggregation: In hierarchical based aggrega-
tion usually all the vehicles participate in the aggregation process.
Vehicles may be smart or non-smart. A smart vehicle has relatively
strong computational resources, typically access to on-board
sensors of cars, and executes a number of applications for traffic
safety and driving comfort. In contrast, a non-smart vehicle is a
cost-efficient device with limited computational capabilities. Many
of the research works on safety information aggregation assumes
that all the vehicles in a VANET system are smart vehicles.
Considering all the vehicles as smart vehicles in a VANET system
is too idealistic.
Compatibility of non-smart vehicles with smart vehicles is an
important task for aggregation process in VANETs. In the applica-
tion and communication domain of a non-smart vehicle, aggrega-
tion logic execution is not available. Hence an efficient aggregation
scheme with the consideration of non-smart vehicles is required.
Such algorithms must provide a default application in non-smart
vehicles, that is able to identify the nearby aggregator vehicles and
forwarding the cached data to it.
5. Information validation
Validation of information is a process of ensuring that the
specified requirements of information are sufficiently correct and
complete. Reliable information exchange among the vehicles is
necessary for success of VANET applications. Also the protection of
user privacy is a matter of great importance. Hence the validation
of information prior to gathering, aggregation and dissemination
process is critical. Characteristics of information validation process
are as follows. (1) Validation of information must be done by
legitimate/authenticated vehicle. (2) Identification process of vali-
dating vehicle should be simple. (3) After validation, the informa-
tion should preserve its privacy. (4) Efficient validation process
must identify the source of defective or malicious information.
Please cite this article as: Kakkasageri MS, Manvi SS. Information management in vehicular ad hoc networks: A review. Journal of
Network and Computer Applications (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2013.05.015i
(5) The computational overheads arising because of the validation
process must be minimum. (6) For dense VANET scenario, the
validation process should be quick and efficient.
5.1. Authentication based validation
Two efficient broadcast authentication schemes, Fast Authenti-
cation (FastAuth) and Selective Authentication (SelAuth) for
VANETs are proposed in Hsiao et al. (2011a,b). FastAuth secures
periodic single-hop beacon messages. SelAuth secures multi-hop
applications in which a bogus signature may spread out quickly
and impact a significant number of vehicles. SelAuth provides fast
isolation of malicious senders.
A critical validation threat in VANETs is false data injection, i.e.,
an attacker disseminates false information to disrupt the behavior
of the other drivers. Information driven operations of vehicular
networks make false data injection a very effective attack. Proof-
of-Relevance (PoR), proving that the event reporter is authenti-
cally relevant to the event it has reported is discussed in Cao et al.
(2008). The PoR is accomplished by collecting authentic consensus
on the event from witness vehicles in a cooperative way. Event
reports from attackers who fail to provide this PoR are disre-
garded, making the network immune to bogus data.
Pseudonym based authentication mechanism is given in
Calandriello et al. (2007). The mechanism reduces security over-
head for safety beaconing, and retains robustness for transporta-
tion safety, even in adverse network settings. AutoCore, an
automated crash reporting application in VANETs to provide
authenticated digital video and telemetry data is presented in
Rahman and Hengartner. Data is recorded by vehicles either
involved in or at the scene of a crash and can be used by
investigators to reconstruct the events that lead up to the crash.
RSU aided message authentication scheme called RAISE is
proposed in Zhang et al. (2008a,b). RSUs are responsible for
verifying the authenticity of messages sent from vehicles and for
notifying the results back to vehicles. RAISE adopts the k-
anonymity property for preserving user privacy, where a message
cannot be associated with a common vehicle. In the case of the
absence of an RSU, vehicles would cooperatively work to prob-
abilistically verify only a small percentage of these message
signatures based on their own computing capacity.
5.2. Threshold based validation
Most of the VANET applications rely on node-to-node commu-
nication. This allows for malicious data traffic. At the same time,
easy access to information afforded by VANETs potentially enables
the difficult security goal of data validation. An evaluation scheme
to check the validity of VANET data is proposed in Golle et al.
(2004). In this approach a node searches for possible explanation
for the data it has collected based on the fact that malicious nodes
may be present. Explanations that are consistent with the node's
model of the VANET are scored and the node accepts the data as
dictated by the highest scoring explanations.
To determine the validity of an event, or to prevent the abuse of
emergency alarms, determining whether the number of vehicles
reporting an event is above a threshold or not is an important
mechanism for VANETs. Because many applications rely on a
threshold number of notifications to reach agreement among
vehicles. Efficient and secure threshold-based event validation
protocol for VANETs is proposed in Hsiao et al. (2011a,b). A
Threshold Anonymous Announcement (TAA) service using direct
anonymous attestation and one-time anonymous authentication
to simultaneously achieve the seemingly contradictory goals of
reliability, privacy and auditability in VANETs is proposed in Chen
et al. (2011).
 M.S. Kakkasageri, S.S. Manvi / Journal of Network and Computer Applications ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎ 11

Table 6
Summary of validation protocols.

Protocol Mechanism Architecture N/W Type Information Type

FastAuth and SelAuth schemes (Kim et al., 2010) Authentication V2V Dense Bogus signature
based validation identification
Proof-of-relevance (PoR) scheme (Viejo et al., Authentication based V2V Dense Bogus data detection
2009) validation
Pseudonym based validation (Zhu et al., 2008) Authentication based V2V Dense Safety beaconing messages
validation
AutoCore (Eichler et al., 2006) Authentication based V2V/V2I Sparse/ Providing authenticated digital video and telemetry
validation dense data
RAISE (Sha et al., 2010) Authentication based V2I Sparse/ Preserving user privacy
validation dense
Data validation scheme (Molina-Gil et al., 2010) Threshold based validation V2V Dense Detection of malicious nodes
Secure validation (Hsiao et al., 2011a,b) Threshold based validation V2V/V2I Dense Achieving reliability, privacy and auditability

Table 7
Performance metrics of validation protocols

Protocol Validation accuracy Computation time Computation overhead Robustness Mobility consideration

FastAuth and SelAuth schemes (Kim et al., 2010) High High Medium Low Medium
Proof-of-Relevance (PoR) scheme (Viejo et al., 2009) High Low High Medium Low
Pseudonym based validation (Zhu et al., 2008) Medium High Low High Low
AutoCore (Eichler et al., 2006) Medium Medium Low Low High
RAISE (Sha et al., 2010) Medium Low Low Low Medium
Data validation scheme (Molina-Gil et al., 2010) High Medium Medium Low Low
Secure validation (Hsiao et al., 2011a,b) High Medium Medium High Low

5.3. Other validation mechanisms
Practical ways to provide reliable reputation scores for vehicles
in a vehicular network is provided in Park et al. (2011). Based on
the phenomenon of predefined constant daily trajectories in
VANETs, roadside infrastructure rely on repeated daily observa-
tions of the same set of passing-by vehicles. With this long-term
reputation, scores are developed. A system for vehicle-generated
announcements is presented in Daza et al. (2009). The system is
secure against external and internal attackers attempting to send
fake messages. Internal attacks are thwarted using an endorse-
ment mechanism based on threshold signatures.
A key optimization technique in VANETs is to cache frequently
accessed data items in a local storage of vehicles. Since vehicles are
not critically limited by the storage space, it is a less of a problem
which data items to cache. A cache invalidation algorithm that
takes advantage of the underlying location management scheme
to reduce the number of broadcast operations and the correspond-
ing query delay is given in Lim et al. (2008).
Validation and evaluation of NEtwork MObility (NEMO) in
VANET using geographic routing is done in Jemaa et al.. The
combination of geographic-based routing protocols (GeoNetwork-
ing) and IPv6 NEMO into a single communication architecture
(IPv6 GeoNetworking) is key in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks
(VANET). NEMO manages Internet access and session continuity
between the vehicle and the Internet. Geographically based data
forwarding allows an efficient dissemination of the information
between vehicles and the infrastructure.
Some of the data validation schemes in VANETs are summar-
ized in Table 6. Validation protocols performance metrics are listed
in Table 7.
the open research issues of validating the safety information are as
follows.
Authentication based validation: In authentication mechanism,
usually digital signatures or certificates are added to the safety
information. The computational overhead of adding a digital
signature or certificate to each safety information must be small.
Since the vehicle has to verify digital signatures or certificates at a
fast pace with hard real-time guarantees. In order to achieve this,
use of advanced cryptosystem algorithms is necessary.
Applications in VANETs are vulnerable to false data injection
attacks and fake authentication, where misbehaving vehicles
inject bogus information into the network to affect the behavior
of the other drivers for their selfish objectives. Such kind of
attackers may lead to intentional accidents. Hence intelligent
and efficient security and privacy algorithms are needed to
eliminate such type of false data injection attackers.
Threshold based validation: Most of the threshold based valida-
tion protocols for VANETs are from wireless networks. Such
protocols are inefficient, because they are designed for low
mobility devices. But VANET demands quick and accurate valida-
tion algorithms for safety information, considering the vehicles
speed, position, etc. The major issue is in employing a mechanism
for validating safety information on the fly.
During threshold based validation process usually vehicle
considers only a subset of the information it receives. This may
lead to the introduction of malicious data from the misbehaving
vehicle. Identification and removal of such type of malicious data
producing vehicles are challenging issues.
6. Information dissemination

5.4. Open research problems Information dissemination can be defined as broadcasting

Specific requirements of VANETs make hard to address valida-
tion issues of safety information, which make the field of valida-
tion as an interesting research topic. Validation of safety
information is open and active research field. More particularly,
information about itself and the other vehicles it knows about.
Each time a vehicle receives information broadcast by another
vehicle, it updates its stored information accordingly and defers
forwarding the information to the next broadcast period, at which
time it broadcasts its updated information. VANET applications

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12 M.S. Kakkasageri, S.S. Manvi / Journal of Network and Computer Applications ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎
require that certain data be disseminated in a geographical area
under all conditions. The reason for this is that the relevance of
information decreases with the distance to the location
(Krishnamurthy, 2008). Safety information dissemination methods
in VANETs are discussed in Chen et al. (2008). Many of the
dissemination protocols for VANETs are based on the following
techniques:flooding, broadcasting, neighbor knowledge based
exchange and cluster based approach (Dar et al., 2010). Recently,
several dissemination and broadcasting protocols have been
proposed for mobile ubiquitous systems (Bellavista et al., 2013).
For data dissemination technique, vehicles must be able to
communicate with each other to ensure that safety and traffic
management applications function successfully. In a heteroge-
neous communications environment where multiple radio access
technologies are available, the manner in which information is
propagated between the key players is a major issue which
ultimately impacts driver safety. The aim of data dissemination
is to transport information to the intended recipients while
meeting a number of design requirements. The convergence time
and lifetime of the data as well the reliability of data transporta-
tion across the vehicular system are important considerations.
Information exchange in VANETs occurs between vehicles
(inter-vehicle communications) in an ad hoc manner and also
with roadside base stations using the so-called DSRC links
(Zimmermann et al., 2005). Different types of information dis-
semination methods are discussed in Kakkasageri et al. (2012).
Designing of robust and efficient dissemination strategy in VANET
is a challenging task because of the following characteristics:
(1) Information must be kept alive. (2) Information mechanism
must work efficiently for both dense and sparse VANETs. (3) Infor-
mation dissemination strategy should be robust against the varia-
tions in the transmitted signal power level of vehicles. (4)
Information dissemination process must be intelligent to identify
the target dissemination area, i.e., movement of vehicles in same
direction, in opposite direction and in both directions.
6.1. Forwarding based dissemination
Data forwarding as a key responsibility of a VANET's communica-
tion device is addressed in Moreno et al. (2006). Packet-centric
forwarding (PCF) and information-centric forwarding (ICF), aimed to
disseminate information in a VANET environment are presented.
Information forwarding responsibilities reside in the application
protocol layer(s) and exploit the applications capability of informa-
tion modification, aggregation, and invalidation. Packet forwarding
functionalities are implemented in the network protocol layer to
rapidly disseminate information of very high priority (safety-of-life).
Low-cost nodes incapable of processing safety-related information
are used to increase network connectivity.
Utility driven information dissemination approach in vehicle
ad-hoc networks is presented in Greene et al.. This approach uses
application specific utility descriptions, which are reduced to
simpler and more compact micro-utility approximations. These
micro-utilities travel with the data to guide critical in-transit
resource decisions such as dropping data, access to infrastructure
networks, and storing data for later forwarding.
Adaptive Traffic Beacon (ATB), a distributed scheme is pre-
sented in Sommer et al. (2011). ATB uses adaptive beaconing and
based on metrics message utility and channel quality. ATB leads to
a much broader dissemination of messages (in terms of penetra-
tion rate) than flooding-based approaches.
6.2. Broadcasting based dissemination
Mechanisms that improve the reliability of broadcasting pro-
tocols in VANET, where the emphasis is on satisfying the delay
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requirements for safety applications are discussed in Koubek et al.
(2010a,b). Pseudo-acknowledgments (PACKs) are used for multi-
hop broadcast transmission through overhearing successive
rebroadcasts by its neighbors. As the broadcast packet traverses
the network, each hop creates dynamic time slots in order to
rebroadcast. Intermediate hops that receive the broadcast wait
until the dynamic slot time expires and then rebroadcasts thereby
acknowledging a link between itself and a previous hop. If the
previous hop does not overhear the rebroadcast, it repeats the
rebroadcasting. The dynamic slots are created locally at individual
nodes and do not require a global clock.
A stochastic broadcast as a solution for VANET is discussed in
Slavik and Mahgoub (2010). Stochastic broadcast instructs nodes
to rebroadcast messages according to a retransmit probability. In
this scheme the link between the mathematical science of con-
tinuum percolation and stochastic broadcast is demonstrated.
Specifically, that the critical percolation threshold in continuum
percolation translates to the wireless broadcast context.
AutoNomos, a decentralized traffic information system, which
is suited for the evaluation of data dissemination protocol is
presented in Wegener et al. (2007). Optimized and self-
adaptable AutoCast scheme is used for various dynamic topologies.
A piggybacked cooperative repetition approach for reliably broad-
casting safety messages in VANETs is discussed in Yang et al..
Repetitions by neighbors that receive the original transmission
cover the areas that are missed in the original transmissions.
Repetitions are piggybacked by the newly generated messages so
that no extra messages are injected into the network.
Propagation model for urban VANETs, i.e., CORNER is discussed
in Giordano et al. (2010). CORNER implements a light weight
propagation model that only needs information about the road
topology providing a good trade off between computational
complexity and verisimilitude of the simulation. CORNER provides
the path loss as a function of the relative position of two nodes for
urban scenarios. For each couple of vehicles the model takes into
account three possible cases: Line Of Sight (LOS), Non Line Of Sight
with one corner along the path (NLOS1) and Non Line Of Sight
with two corners along the path (NLOS2).
Exchanging status information by broadcasting among the
vehicles enhances vehicular active safety (Yang et al., 2008). A
channel adaptive broadcasting method is proposed in this work. It
relies solely on channel condition information available at each
vehicle by employing standard supported sequence number
mechanisms.
6.3. Push based dissemination
A communication architecture for data dissemination in a
heterogeneous vehicular wireless environment is discussed in
Brickley et al. (2007). Policy-based solution is provided to dis-
seminate the data for ITS application. Policy based solution
considers the application requirements and the quality of the
wireless carrier. This determines how the information can be
propagated to the relevant recipients in the most effective and
efficient manner. In this work, a push-based ITS application is
considered for analysis of the dissemination policy. Applications
that require higher levels of cooperation may not get the benefits
from this dissemination scheme.
This work is a part of “Cooperative Vehicle Infrastructure Systems”
project (CVIS) (www.cvisproject.org,). The CVIS project is based on a
hybrid architectural approach for ITS. In CVIS, the architecture is
realized using the Continuous Air Interface for Long to Medium range
(CALM) communications standard (www.calm.hu). CALM aims
to provide user transparent, continuous communication in support
of emerging ITS applications. It combines complementary media,
 M.S. Kakkasageri, S.S. Manvi / Journal of Network and Computer Applications ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎
allowing vehicles to use the best combination in-vehicle and infra-
structure communications technology locally available.
An agent based model that consists of heavy-weight static
cognitive (based on Belief Desire Intention: BDI) and light-weight
mobile agents for integrated safety information gathering and
dissemination is proposed in Kakkasageri et al., Kakkasageri and
Manvi (2011a,b), and Kakkasageri et al. (2011). Cognitive agent
based model executes push (gather/store and disseminate) and
pull (gather/store) operations on information gathered based on
information relevance, criticalness and importance.
6.4. Routing protocols based dissemination
Routing scheme for highly dynamic networks like VANETs,
relying on conditions-based communication is proposed in
Ducourthial et al. (2007). Instead of transporting addresses (or
positions), a message is sent with some conditions used for
retransmission or reception. Assessment of VANET multi-hop
routing over an experimental platform is described in Santa
et al. (2009). A review of recent routing protocols for both text
and video data transmission is done in Ghafoor et al. (2010).
Quality based comparison of routing protocols for video data
streaming over VANET is studied in this work. Dissemination of
multimedia type (e.g., video, audio) using network coding for
safety information in VANET is described in Park et al..
Position-based routing algorithm for data dissemination in
VANETs, that is able to exploit both street topology information
achieved from geographic information systems and information
about spatial distribution of vehicles along street and vehicular
traffic, in order to perform better routing decisions is proposed in
Giudici. Self-Organizing Communication with Protocol Elements
(SLOPE) protocol to separate protocol functionality in application
and communication domain leaving the common protocol practice
with network layering and sockets is proposed in Schnaufer et al.
(2006).
MobEyes, specifically designed for proactive urban monitoring,
that exploits node mobility to opportunistically diffuse sensed
data summaries among neighbor vehicles and to create a low-cost
index to query monitoring data is presented in Lee et al. (2009,
2006). MobEyes is evaluated in terms of indexing completeness,
harvesting time, and overhead. MobEyes presents the following
research findings: (1) Effects of concurrent exploitation of multiple
harvesting agents with single/multi-hop communications.
(2) Evaluation of network overhead and overall system stability.
Information dissemination control for cooperative active safety
applications in VANETs is discussed in Huang et al. (2009). An
adaptive rate control algorithm based on network condition and
tracking error is proposed in this research work. Local Danger
Warning (LDW) applications and important characteristics of
information dissemination in VANETs are described in Rajwani. A
dynamic collision avoidance component for the standard vehicle-
following approach has been introduced in Gehrig and Stein
(2007). The elastic-band framework is used to modify the initial
path of the leader vehicle.
6.5. Other dissemination mechanisms
Estimation of number of Dissemination Points (DPs) to be
deployed for disseminating information to vehicles traveling in
an urban area is done in Trullols et al.. Maximum Coverage
Problem (MCP) is formulated so as to maximize the number of
vehicles that get in contact with the DPs. Localized Urban
Dissemination (LUD), a location aided gossiping protocol concen-
trates the information spreading to areas where it is most likely to
be useful (Mate and Vida). Design of position based routing
solutions for the support of safety oriented applications in VANETs
Please cite this article as: Kakkasageri MS, Manvi SS. Information management in vehicular ad hoc networks: A review. Journal of
Network and Computer Applications (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2013.05.015i
13
by focusing on the impact of the Medium Access Control (MAC)
layer on the performances of the routing strategies is presented in
Campelli et al..
Replication of local road networks for regional information
dissemination in VANETS is discussed in Roessler and Bruns
(2006). Reproduction of the relevant area is done using interpola-
tion points. The approach is based on locally storing the sequence
of the own current and recent position information for a defined
period of time. Thus each vehicle has a good extract of its last
driving path. This can be either a straight line (e.g., on motor-
ways) or a curve (e.g., on a motor-way exit or on a country road). If
a situation occurs that necessitates to transfer a message to
preceding vehicles like a slippery road warning, the addressing
region for this message can be specified with the stored position
information.
Sharing of limited wireless channel capacity scheme for the
exchange of safety related information in a fully deployed VANET
is discussed in Torrent-Moreno et al.. In this scheme, load sent to
the channel is limited using a strict fairness criterion among the
nodes. A formal definition of this problem is presented in terms of
a max–min optimization problem with an extra condition on per-
node maximality. Then Fair Power Adjustment for Vehicular
environments (FPAV), a power control algorithm is used to find
the optimum transmission range of every node.
Multi agent based information dissemination model for appli-
cations like safety information, location awareness service and
entertainment services in VANETs is presented in Manvi et al.
(2008a,b,c,d) and Manvi et al. (2006, 2007). Multi agent model
consists of ‘lightweight’, network-facing, mobile agents; and ‘hea-
vyweight’, application-facing, norm-aware agents. This model
provides flexibility, adaptability and maintainability for traffic
information dissemination in VANETs as well as supports robust
and agile network management.
Collision avoidance/warning systems and automation of vehicle
lateral control tasks are discussed in Vahidi and Eskandarian
(2003). This work explains the initiatives for automation in
different levels of transportation system with a specific emphasis
on the vehicle-level automation. Auto and cross correlation
properties of various optical spreading codes are compared and
the infrared direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) inter-vehicle
ranging and vehicle-to-roadside communication systems are pro-
posed in Kwak and Lee (2004).
Trust-based message propagation and evaluation framework in
VANET, where peers share information regarding road condition
or safety and others provide opinions about whether the informa-
tion can be trusted or not is discussed in Chen et al. (2010). Trust
based message propagation model collects and propagates peers
opinions in an efficient, secure and scalable way by dynamically
controlling information dissemination. The trust-based message
evaluation model allows peers to evaluate the information in a
distributed and collaborative fashion by taking into account others
opinions.
Data dissemination schemes for VANETs are summarized in
Table 8. Some of the dissemination protocols performance metrics
are shown in Table 9.
6.6. Open research problems
From a network perspective, information dissemination is
forwarding the information from source to one or several destina-
tions without too much communication overhead and delay. Many
of the information dissemination strategies in research and
development are ongoing. However, there are still open research
issues exist. Some of them are as follows.
Forwarding based dissemination: Due to dynamic variation in
the mobility of vehicles, the topology of VANETs is continuously
14 M.S. Kakkasageri, S.S. Manvi / Journal of Network and Computer Applications ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎

Table 8
Summary of dissemination protocols.

Protocol Mechanism Architecture N/W Type Information Type

PCF and ICF based scheme (Krishnamurthy, 2008) Forwarding based dissemination V2V Dense Safety applications
Utility driven dissemination (Chen et al., 2008) Forwarding based dissemination V2V/V2I Dense Infrastructure stored
messages
ATB (Dar et al., 2010) Forwarding based dissemination V2V Dense Any type of messages
PACKs based scheme (Bellavista et al., 2013) Broadcast based dissemination V2V Dense Any type of information
Stochastic mechanism (Zimmermann et al., 2005) Broadcast based dissemination V2V Dense Delay tolerant applications
AutoNomos (Kakkasageri et al., 2012) Broadcast based dissemination V2V Dense Safety messages
CVIS (Slavik and Mahgoub, 2010) Push based dissemination Hybrid Sparse/ ITS applications
Dense
Cognitive agent approach (Yang et al.; Giordano et al., 2010; Yang et al., Push based dissemination V2V Dense Safety information
2008)
Multimedia information dissemination (Kakkasageri et al.) Routing protocols based V2V Dense Safety information
dissemination
MobEyes (Ducourthial et al., 2007) Routing protocols based V2V Dense Urban monitoring
dissemination applications
Information dissemination (Ghafoor et al., 2010) Routing protocols based V2V Dense Safety information
dissemination

Table 9
Performance metrics of dissemination protocols.

Protocol Dissemination Dissemination success Packet Bandwidth usage Scalability

delay ratio delivery ratio

PCF and ICF based scheme (Krishnamurthy, 2008) Low Medium Medium High Medium
Utility driven dissemination (Chen et al., 2008) Medium Medium Low High Medium
ATB (Dar et al., 2010) High Medium High High Low
PACKs based scheme (Bellavista et al., 2013) Medium Medium Low Low Medium
Stochastic mechanism (Zimmermann et al., 2005) Low Medium High Low Medium
AutoNomos (Kakkasageri et al., 2012) High Medium Medium Low Low
CVIS (Slavik and Mahgoub, 2010) High Medium Medium Medium Medium
Cognitive agent approach (Yang et al.; Giordano et al., 2010; Yang Low Medium High High Medium
et al., 2008)
Multimedia information dissemination (Kakkasageri et al.) Medium Medium Medium High Low
MobEyes (Ducourthial et al., 2007) Medium Low Medium High Medium
Information dissemination (Ghafoor et al., 2010) Medium Low Medium Medium Low

changing. In dense networks, such as cities or major highways
with a large portion of equipped vehicles, the data load on the
channel should be controlled in order not to exceed the limited
wireless bandwidth. In contrast, in sparse networks, channel
saturation is not a critical issue. Moreover, messages should be
repeated since equipped vehicles are most likely to be out of
wireless radio range of each other; vehicles inside the area of
influence of a hazard, but not reachable at the time they are
detected and should also be notified. Note that in case of
experiencing a dense network, the forwarding strategy is required
to be very efficient in terms of overhead while ensuring high
reliability to priority messages with the most important payload, i.
e., safety-of-life. Hence, devising of dissemination protocols with
minimum communication delay for varying dynamic topology is a
challenging task.
Broadcasting based dissemination: The dissemination mechan-
ism can either broadcast information to vehicles in all directions,
or perform a directed broadcast restricting information about a
vehicle to other vehicles behind it. Further, the communication
could be relayed using only vehicles traveling in the same direc-
tion, vehicles traveling in the opposite direction, or vehicles
traveling in both directions. The safety information dissemination
protocol must assure that all vehicles in the expected zone receive
the disseminated information. Along with this task, the dissemi-
nation protocol should be capable to eliminate the message
redundancy.
Push based dissemination: Safety hazards can be associated
with a time duration and geographical area while/where they
can potentially affect vehicles safety state. In push based
dissemination, the distribution of some state information will be
repeated (e.g., periodically or at detection of a new neighboring
vehicle) for a defined duration of time while being inside a specific
geographical area. The specific strategy to optimize this repetition
process in push mechanism is to be developed.
The transmitted signal power level of a vehicle may be too
strong or too weak during certain times of the day and in certain
city environments. When the transmission range is too strong, it
creates interference and lowers the system throughput. When
transmitted signal power level is too low, the vehicle cannot reach
other vehicles. Hence, push strategy with Smart algorithms for
data dissemination that adjusts according to the transmitted signal
power level is needed.
Routing protocols based dissemination: For one way and two way
in the context of traffic, a system for scalable routing of traffic data
dissemination and visualization in VANETs is needed. Vehicles
moving in both directions may yield the best performance. But
vehicles in the opposite direction needed better routing protocols
to increase the data dissemination performance. This is because
topological transmission range needs to maintain a path from the
source to the destination.
Multi-hopping mechanism is used, when the information is
disseminated to destinations beyond the transmission range.
Multi-hop techniques consume lot of wireless resources because
of redundant retransmissions and increase the communication
delay. Hence, the designing of efficient and reliable safety infor-
mation dissemination algorithms is complicated.
The dissemination mechanism should be scalable. VANET
characteristics like high-speed node movement, frequent topology

Please cite this article as: Kakkasageri MS, Manvi SS. Information management in vehicular ad hoc networks: A review. Journal of
Network and Computer Applications (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2013.05.015i
 M.S. Kakkasageri, S.S. Manvi / Journal of Network and Computer Applications ∎ (∎∎∎∎) ∎∎∎–∎∎∎
change and short connection lifetime, especially with multi-hop
paths need some typical data dissemination models for
VANETs.
Safety information applications require fast association and low
communication latency between communicating vehicles. The
basic need of such type of applications is reliability and time
sensitivity. Hence the future routing protocols based safety infor-
mation dissemination protocols must be capable to provide the
QoS parameters like latency, reachability, etc.
7. Conclusions
VANET differs from other types of wireless networks in terms
of mobility, varying network topologies, communication patterns,
etc. Because of the VANET constraints, providing the safety
information based applications in VANETs is a challenging task.
This paper presented a survey of the information management
techniques in VANET, especially with respect to vehicle/driver
safety. Basically, information management involves gathering,
aggregation, validation and dissemination techniques. Each tech-
nique possess different characteristics and requirements. Hence,
the review focused on classification of techniques based on
characteristics, in-depth analysis of a number of research solutions
and future directions for research. To the best of our knowledge, an
exhaustive literature survey of information management in
VANETs is presented to give scope to the VANET researchers.
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