Stable Clustering for Ad-Hoc Vehicle Networking

Vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) that enable communication among vehicles and between vehicles and un-manned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and cellular base stations have recently attracted significant interest from the research community, due to the wide range of practical applications they can facilitate (e.g. road safety, traffic management, pollution monitoring and rescue missions). Despite this increased research activity, the high vehicle mobility in a VANET raises concerns regarding the robustness and adaptiveness of such networks to support system applications. Instead of allowing direct communications between every vehicle to UAVs or base stations, clustering methods will potentially be efficient to overcome bandwidth, power consumption and other resource issues. Using the clustering technique, neighbouring vehicles are grouped into clusters with a particular vehicle elected as the Custer Head (CH) in each cluster. Each vehicle communicates with UAVs or base stations through the CH of the associated cluster. Despite the potential advantages, a major challenge for clustering techniques is to maintain cluster stability in light of vehicle mobility and radio fluctuation. In this paper, we propose a Stable Clustering Algorithm for vehicular adhoc networks (SCalE). Two novel features are incorporated into the algorithm: knowledge of the vehicles behaviour for efficient selection of CHs, and the employment of a backup CH to maintain the stability of cluster structures. By simulation methods, these are shown to increase stability and improve performance when compared to existing clustering algorithms.