Modified clustering and incentivized stable CH selection for reliable VANET communication

Modern smart cities rely on Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) for real-time traffic safety warnings and collision avoidance. However, high mobility, variable driving patterns, and urban contexts in VANET require optimal clustering and stable Cluster Head (CH) selection for reliable communication. Problem statement: Due to dynamic mobility in VANET, maintaining the CH stability and reliable communication is still a challenge. In high-density urban environments, the risk of communication disruptions increases due to the presence of a large number of vehicles competing for limited communication resources. Traditional graph-based suboptimal clusters lead to suboptimal communication reliability and disruptions compared to hypergraph based VANET. Such a modelling leads to reduced overhead and increased packet delay. Proposed Methodology: To overcome these issues of varying mobility in VANET and unstable CH selection, a new CH selection framework with an Adaptive Neighboring Behavior-Incentivization (ANB-I) process for stable and reliable CH selection is introduced. The selection of the CH based on Multi-criteria Multi-decision (MCMD) making of three metrics: Adaptive Neighborhood Degree, Adaptive Link Lifetime (Adaptive -LLT), and Adaptive Relative Average Speed. Results: The suggested approach prioritizes CHs with normal behaviours and longer link lifetimes to balance stability and reliability. The proposed model is tested on MATLAB software and SUMO simulations of 100 (sparse) and 1000 (dense) vehicle densities. The proposed model achieves a 75% CH stability with three optimal numbers of clusters, outperforming previous works by 4.17% improvement. Conclusion: A key aspect of the proposed CH selection is the incorporation of dynamic behaviour of driver’s estimation based on the concept of incentive process. By prioritizing CHs with longer link lifetimes and stable driving patterns, the proposed model seeks to mitigate disruptions and enhance the throughput (overhead) of the VANET network.