Evaluation of Selective Broadcast Algorithms for Safety Applications in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Just as wireless communications developfurther to achieve higher performance, new applicationareas emerge to challenge the limits. Vehicular ad hoc networksare one of these areas, and emergency situation warning is oneof their most popular applications since traffic safetyis a concern for everyone. Due to the life-critical nature ofemergency applications, however, it is extremely important toensure the solutions proposed meet the standards required,such as reliable and timely delivery of the safetywarning in a situation like car collision avoidance. In order to putthe candidate solutions to the test and evaluate their feasibility,we adopt the approach of computer simulation. We implementfour different selective broadcast algorithms used for informationdissemination in vehicular ad hoc networks, and compare theirperformance under identical realistic simulation conditions.Our goal is to provide an evaluation focussing onthe performance with respect to safety, rather than to network aspects like throughput, loss, and delay. Wedefine four new performance criteria to address the effectiveness,efficiency, timeliness, and overhead of the broadcastalgorithms in safety warning delivery. The results weobtain using these criteria help us to understand better thedesign requirements of a high-performance selective broadcastalgorithm