Vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) offer a large number of new potential applications without relying on significant infrastructure. Many of these applications benefit from multi-hop relaying of information, thus requiring a routing protocol. Characteristics unique to VANETs (such as high mobility and the need for geographical addressing) make many conventional ad hoc routing protocols unsuitable. Also, some envisioned applications have end-to-end QoS requirements. In this paper we propose a new multicast routing protocol specifically designed for VANETs. Its purpose is to provide a routing service for a future reliable transport protocol. We evaluate its performance using realistic network and traffic models. It is shown that it is possible to implement a reliable multicast routing protocol for VANETs.
Maria Kihl, Mihail L. Sichitiu, Ted Ekeroth, Micha