CACONET: Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) Based Clustering Algorithm for VANET

A vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a wirelessly connected network of vehicular nodes. A number of techniques, such as message ferrying, data aggregation, and vehicular node clustering aim to improve communication efficiency in VANETs. Cluster heads (CHs), selected in the process of clustering, manage inter-cluster and intra-cluster communication. The lifetime of clusters and number of CHs determines the efficiency of network. In this paper a Clustering algorithm based on Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) for VANETs (CACONET) is proposed. CACONET forms optimized clusters for robust communication. CACONET is compared empirically with state-of-the-art baseline techniques like Multi-Objective Particle Swarm Optimization (MOPSO) and Comprehensive Learning Particle Swarm Optimization (CLPSO). Experiments varying the grid size of the network, the transmission range of nodes, and number of nodes in the network were performed to evaluate the comparative effectiveness of these algorithms. For optimized clustering, the parameters considered are the transmission range, direction and speed of the nodes. The results indicate that CACONET significantly outperforms MOPSO and CLPSO.