Shortest-time route finding application using vehicular communication

Since vehicular transportation is the preferred travel mode, people are spending more time on the road due to traffic problems, that are increasing with the growing levels of motorization worldwide. A significant percentage of this time is spent during traffic congestion and at road junctions [1]. With the advances in wireless technologies and the emergence of Inter-Vehicular Communication (IVC) techniques, new research studies are carried out to develop new applications and services over vehicular ad hoc networks, for improving the efficiency and safety on the road, with the advantage of bypassing the need for expensive infrastructure. However, despite the considerable research effort that is concentrating on data dissemination and routing protocols, the support for applications other than the access to the internet remains limited. In this paper, we propose a vehicular communication application for providing travelling vehicles with timely information to find the shortest-time route to their destinations according to the road condition. The proposed application employs a Geocasting protocol for information sharing among vehicles within a certain geographic area. We show, through simulation results, that the proposed application can significantly decrease the average travel time under different traffic patterns.