Optimal broadcast scheduling method for VANETs: An adaptive discrete firefly approach

Vehicular Adhoc Networks (VANET) are thought-about as a mainstay in Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). For an efficient vehicular Adhoc network, broadcasting i.e. sharing a safety related message across all vehicles and infrastructure throughout the network is pivotal. Hence an efficient TDMA based MAC protocol for VANETs would serve the purpose of broadcast scheduling. At the same time, high mobility, influential traffic density, and an altering network topology makes it strenuous to form an efficient broadcast schedule. In this paper an evolutionary approach has been chosen to solve the broadcast scheduling problem in VANETs. The paper focusses on identifying an optimal solution with minimal TDMA frames and increased transmissions. These two parameters are the converging factor for the evolutionary algorithms employed. The proposed approach uses an Adaptive Discrete Firefly Algorithm (ADFA) for solving the Broadcast Scheduling Problem (BSP). The results are compared with traditional evolutionary approaches such as Genetic Algorithm and Cuckoo search algorithm. A mathematical analysis to find the probability of achieving a time slot is done using Markov Chain analysis.