Abstract
Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a set of vehicles trying to exchange security and comfort data even if they are not directly within radio range of each other. As VANET presented several challenges, the various contributions defined are not efficient to provide reliable services. Consequently, several researches and projects have been launched to develop an intelligent transportation system that guarantees both safety and comfort for users. Although the use of metaheuristics seems to be the most convenient to overcome these issues, actually, to the best of our knowledge, there are no studies addressing the uses of those approaches in VANET. This paper surveys and discusses different metaheuristics applied to solve the routing problem within VANET. Furthermore, technical challenges and future trends are treated and presented.