Overhearing-Assisted Optimization of Address AutoConfiguration in Position Aware-VANETs

Abstract

Vehicular networks allow vehicles to exchange information that can be used to improve traffic efficiency and drivers’ safety. In addition to these new applications, Internet connectivity is also expected to be available in the cars of the near future, speeding up the global adoption of vehicular communication systems. One of the requirements for connecting vehicles to the Internet is their ability to auto-configure IP addresses. In this article, we propose an optimization to Geographically Scoped stateless Address Configuration (GeoSAC), which is an IP address auto-configuration mechanism for geographically aware location vehicles. The benefits of this optimization are two-fold: it can reduce the IP address configuration time, and it can be used to reduce the signaling overhead of GeoSAC. The optimization does not require any changes to the GeoSAC operation, being fully compatible with the original solution. We derive an analytical model for the probability of our optimization being effective in realistic scenarios and for the IP address configuration time. We also provide a thorough evaluation of the performance improvements of the optimization, including simulations with a realistic model for wireless technology, real vehicular traces, and experiments with a real prototype, which provide strong support for our analytical model.