SEIR epidemic spreading model to suppress broadcast storm in vehicular ad hoc networks

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) is a form of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) to improve road safety and transport efficiency. During an emergency like accidents, traffic jams, etc., the vehicles in VANET are alerted with an Emergency Safety Message (ESM) through broadcasting. However, blind broadcasting of ESMs across VANETs leads to Broadcast Storm Problem (BSP) which would affect the QoS requirements of VANET. Hence, it is vital to suppress BSP to broadcast ESMs effectively. This paper proposes a Broadcast Storm Suppression Algorithm (BSSA) based on the concept of epidemic spreading, i.e. SEIR (Susceptible, Exposed, Infected and Removed) model. The broadcast storm is suppressed by finding the 'Farthest Infected Vehicle' (FIV) travelling in the direction of the ESM and recovering the other infected vehicles within the region to prevent from rebroadcasting the ESM. The SEIR model is simulated in NS-2.34 and found to outperform other popular broadcasting techniques.