DClu: A Direction-Based Clustering Algorithm for VANETs Management

Nowadays, the world is adapting to the concept of Internet of Things, changing the way of intending everything around us, including cities. Indeed, smart cities are an interesting emerging application of Internet of Things, combining the infrastructures with new technologies aimed to improve mobility, energy consumption, but also the environment. In such a scenario, vehicular ad hoc networks play an important role, by allowing a smart communication between vehicles, and improving, as a consequence, traffic congestion and road safety. To perform such a communication in an efficient way, clustering techniques have always been used to organize vehicles in groups in an opportune way, so to exploit the network potential at the best. In this work, we propose an innovative clustering approach, which is based on the direction of movement of vehicles, rather than on their punctual position. The direction is expressed in terms of angle of displacement with respect to a fixed point. Results show that the direction-based approach provides a vehicles grouping guaranteeing an efficient inter-vehicular communication.