Title:  Efficient Safety Message Dissemination in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Committee: 

Dr. Copeland, Y. Chang, Advisors  

Dr. Beyah, Chair

Dr. Riley

Abstract: The objective of the proposed research is to provide highly innovative and feasible solutions to efficiently and reliably disseminate the safety information in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) using the Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) communications to improve transportation safety on the road. The contributions of this research are multifold. Firstly, a novel multihop broadcasting algorithm is developed, which exploits a smart forwarder selection process, handshake-less broadcasting, ACK Decoupling and efficient collision resolution mechanism. The algorithm significantly improves the speed of safety message propagation without compromising on the reliability. The algorithm is analyzed and optimized using thorough mathematical modeling with extensive simulations. Simulation results show a significant safety message delay improvement. Secondly, this research proposes a system that facilitates the effective sharing of safety-related data in VANETs by storing and exchanging the data (about the potential threats) obtained from the neighboring vehicles across multiple hops as well as from other active sensor technologies on the vehicle. The key attraction of this system is its novelty, simplicity, practicality and applicability. The system leverages entirely on Basic Safety Messages (BSM) for improving the surroundings awareness of the vehicles. Simulation results show the effectiveness of this system. The key advantage of the above techniques is that the exchange of safety-related data among the vehicles takes place using the existing V2V standards without requiring any modification to the standards. The algorithms ensure efficient spectral utilization of the common Control Channel by delivering safety-related information to the endangered vehicles with lower latencies.