Machine Learning-assisted Distance Based Residual Energy Aware Clustering Algorithm for Energy Efficient Information Dissemination in Urban VANETs

A Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) is an essential component of intelligent transportation systems in the building of smart cities. A VANET is a self-configure high mobile and dynamic potential wireless ad-hoc network that joins all vehicle nodes in a smart city to provide in-vehicle infotainment services to city administrators and residents. In the smart city, the On-board Unit (OBU) of each vehicle has multiple onboard sensors that are used for data collection from the surrounding environment. One of the main issues in VANET is energy efficiency and balance because the small onboard sensors can’t be quickly recharged once installed on On-board Units (OBUs). Moreover, conserving energy stands out as a crucial challenge in VANET which is primarily contingent on the selection of Cluster Heads (CH) and the adopted packet routing strategy. To address this issue, this paper proposes distance and energy-aware clustering algorithms named SOMNNDP, which use a Self-Organizing Map Neural Network (SOMNN) machine learning technique to perform faster multi-hop data dissemination. Individual Euclidean distances and residual node energy are considered as mobility parameters throughout the cluster routing process to improve and balance the energy consumption among the participating vehicle nodes. This maximizes the lifetime of VANET by ensuring that all intermediate vehicle nodes use energy at approximately the same rate. Simulation findings demonstrate that SOMNNDP improves Quality of Service (QoS) better and consumes 17% and 14% less energy during cluster routing than distance and energy-aware variation of K-Means (KM) and Fuzzy C-Means (FCM) called KMDP and FCMDP respectively.