Abstract
Efficient data dissemination is a big challenge for both IEEE 802.11p (MAC contentions problem) and cellular vehicle-to-everything communications (limited bandwidth in the high dense network). In this paper, a two-level clustering scheme is proposed for efficient data dissemination in 5G V2X communications. In the proposed protocol, level-1 cluster heads (L1CHs) are selected by a fuzzy logic algorithm using three factors, i.e., relative velocity factor, k-connectivity factor, and link reliability factor. The slide link vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) or the Third Generation Partnership Project V2V overcomes the MAC contention problem in L1CHs selections. Next, the level-2 cluster heads are selected by an improved Q-learning aiming to reduce the number of iterations in the gateway selection to LTE base station. The proposed scheme is evaluated under different network conditions showing that our protocol achieves good results compared to the existing schemes.