Information Dissemination Scheme Using Location-Based Mobile Agents in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

A vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) consists of vehicles (mobile nodes) and road side units which are equipped with wireless devices such as wireless LANs. Mobile nodes exchange information messages with each other so that VANETs are configured in a self-organized manner. As one of VANET application scenarios, VANET application provides available parking spaces in the city central to drivers (vehicles). In this scenario, the road side units which are deployed at the parking spaces periodically disseminate the number of available parking spaces to drivers. Therefore, we have proposed a mobile agent-based information dissemination scheme in the VANET environment. In this paper, we propose a mechanism where mobile agents migrate among vehicles by using the location information to disseminate the information messages with low overhead for a shorter time. In addition, we conduct the simulation experiments in the VANET environment to evaluate the proposed information dissemination scheme.