A Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Protocol for Collaborative Identification of Urban Traffic Conditions.

This paper proposes a vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication protocol which makes it possible to discover and share traffic status information in a novel, efficient and comprehensive way. The protocol is specifically designed to work in an environment without infrastructure where all the vehicles (nodes) can talk to each other (ad-hoc network) and collaboratively generate new knowledge relevant to the traffic conditions existing at that moment in an urban environment. The nature of such a network demands self-configuration and autonomous behaviour. The protocol adheres to these principles and makes it possible for the nodes to initiate discovery and determine the location of areas where specific traffic conditions apply. The proposed ˵Single Ripple″ algorithm determines these areas by only involving vehicles with the desired conditions and their neighbours. The algorithm imposes only a minimal load onto the wireless network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]