Integrating Software-Defined Networking and Fog Computing for a Novel Routing Protocol in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

This study presents an intelligent strategy designed to enhance the efficacy of routing in VANETs. In particular, this work presents a new clustering approach for Cluster Head (CH) selection based on a weighted formula. Our protocol’s objectives are to create clusters and allocate $\mathbf{C H}$ to each of them. In our protocol, three significant parameters are involved in $\mathbf{C H}$ selection process, including vehicle speed, average vehicle distance among other vehicles, and vehicle LifeTime (LT). By considering vehicle speed, the protocol enhances route stability and dependability while the average distance of a vehicle among other vehicles mitigates long-distance communications. Interestingly, the vehicle LT greatly minimizes the control overhead. Furthermore, for improved programmability and scalability, our approach incorporates novel technologies like Software Defined Network (SDN) and Fog Computing (FC) for location awareness. Proper network simulations are performed to test the performance of our proposed protocol, and considerable increases in terms of throughput are achieved over those of our protocol’s counterparts.