Abstract
Vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) offer a diverse set of applications and therefore gain more and more attention from both academic and industrial communities. However, the deployment of VANETs is not very straight-forward. One challenge is highlighted by an uphill task of establishing and subsequently sustaining a robust communication. The need to obviate extra relay infrastructure in dynamically fluctuating topologies plus concurring shielding obstacles only magnifies this arduous task. In this context, information about traffic-density and about its estimated progress are valuable assets to tackle this issue. This paper proposes a novel routing protocol called Traffic Aware Segment-based Routing (TASR) protocol. The proposed protocol comprises two major parts: 1) Real-time vehicular traffic information for route selection allows for calculating the Expected Connectivity Degree (ECD) on different segments, and 2) a new forwarding method based on geographical information transfers packets from source to destination node. The new metric ECD takes vehicle densities into account, estimating the connectivity on each segment and thus the connectivity of nodes and data delivery ratio for transmitting packets. Furthermore, extensive simulations help analyzing the efficiency of TASR, indicating that it outperforms competing routing protocols.