An Adaptive Vehicular Relay and Gateway Selection Scheme for Connecting VANETs to Internet via 4G LTE Cellular Network

Abstract

In this paper, we propose an efficient relay and mobile gateway vehicle selection in heterogeneous VANETs and 4G LTE cellular networks. The proposed scheme is based on timer-based contention strategy to elect some potential vehicles equipped with both 4G LTE and IEEE 802.11p-based-VANETs interfaces among several other neighboring to act as vehicular gateways in the network, for providing Internet access to source vehicles moving in the road. Therefore, if one source vehicle does not have any gateway in its coverage, the proposed approach integrates an efficient relay selection scheme to select some vehicles equipped with IEEE 802.11p interface to act as relays in order to reach transmission range of mobile gateways. Stability, mobility and received signal strength are the main related metrics considered in the relay and mobile gateway vehicle selection.