A Weight-Based Clustering Algorithm is Used by Military Vehicles for VANET Communication

Every vehicle node in a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) denotes a mobile node that serves as an information transmitter, receiver, and router. VANET belongs to the mobile ad hoc network (MANET) subgroup and is associated with dynamic topology. Finding a viable solution for all VANET applications is the researchers' main task because dynamic network situations provide more complex problems than MANET topologies do. Cluster-based, geocast-based, topology-based, position-based, and broadcast-based routing protocols make up the six categories of routing protocols used in VANET. Unmanned military vehicles (UMVs) and autonomous robots are used in the modern warfare strategy to carry out risky military combat tasks. The military vehicles (MVs) exchange information with one another in order to complete the necessary military missions as a group. The suggested work uses a weight-based clustering technique to partition a rhombus-shaped area into numerous clusters for the purpose of communicating event data to the cars. Rhombus-shaped areas at intersections are particularly useful for clustering. Real-time average speed and degree are two weighted measures that were employed in the suggested method to select the cluster head (CH). The right CH can be selected in the network with the help of this effort. Instead of broadcasting the data, each car in a cluster sends it to the CH. The network performance for various protocols, such as Ad-hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) and dynamic source routing (DSR), has been simulated using the SUMO and NETSIM simulators. This performance is shown in terms of packet delivery ratio, throughput, delay, overhead transmission, mean, and standard deviation. According to the proposed weight-based clustering algorithm, the assignments of the weights are based upon two parameters: vehicle speed and degree. The speed corresponds to the instantaneous speed of a vehicle, while the degree corresponds to the number of nearby vehicles that the sensors are unable to communicate with. The vehicle, which has the highest weight for the combined factors is made the cluster head (CH). The weight is adjusted dynamically in order to adapt to the changing speed and the number of active neighbours in real-time. The weight is attained using the following formula: WT(i)= w1 × deg(i) + w2 × μn; where deg(i) corresponds to degree (number of neighbouring vehicles), and μn, normalised speed. The weighting factors w1 = 0.4 and w2 = 0.6 are set so that the degree has lesser effect than speed in the consideration of selection of the cluster head.