Affiliations: Department of Electronics and Communication
Engineering, Wireless Information Systems Research Laboratory, Reva Institute
of Technology and Management, Bangalore-560064, India | Department of Electronics and Communication
Engineering, Basaveshwar Engineering College, Bagalkot-587102, India | Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering,
Intelligent Systems and Networks Group, Imperial College, London SW7 2BT,
UK
Abstract: Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) are a compelling application of
ad hoc networks, because of the potential to access specific context
information (e.g. traffic conditions, service updates, route planning) and
deliver multimedia services (Voice over IP, in-car entertainment, instant
messaging, etc.). This paper proposes an agent based information dissemination
model for VANETs. A two-tier agent architecture is employed comprising of the
following: 1) 'lightweight', network-facing, mobile agents; 2) 'heavyweight',
application-facing, norm-aware agents. The limitations of VANETs lead us to
consider a hybrid wireless network architecture that includes Wireless
LAN/Cellular and ad hoc networking for analyzing the proposed model. The
proposed model provides flexibility, adaptability and maintainability for
traffic information dissemination in VANETs as well as supports robust and
agile network management. The proposed model has been simulated in various
network scenarios to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach.
Keywords: Multi-agents, MANETs, VANETs, information dissemination
