Distance vector routing for public transportation vehicular networks: Performance evaluation on a real topology

In this last two years an increasing number of scientists has devoted his attention to Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) as a special case of the more generic Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs). A public transportation network used as a VANET backbone may be a viable solution - under certain circumstances - also thanks to its almost-complete area coverage and the pre-scheduled repetitive paths. The aim of this paper is to compare performances of distance vector (DV) routing strategies when applied to a VANET moving as for a real city topology. Our two main contributions are: firstly, to compare results with similar - more canonical - experiments using a grid, and secondly, to outline differences between various DV metrics. By means of simulations we demonstrate that, in the considered network scenario, a distance vector-based routing algorithm can perform well and more complex - and resources hungry - protocols are no longer strictly needed. Moreover, simulations based on a grid topology reproduce the behavior of a real city in a limited way.