Journal of Computer Applications ISSN: 0974 1925, Volume-5, Issue EICA2012-4, February 10, 2012

An Efficient Scheme for Adaptive Mobile Gateway Management in Integrated VANET-UMTS Network
Indhuja T Student Department of Applied Electronics, Arunai Engineering College, Thiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, India E-mail: indhujajob@gmail.com Sujatha G Lecturer Department of Electronics and Communication, Arunai Engineering College, Thiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, India E-mail: suji7jes@gmail.com

Abstract - Vehicle Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs), based on IEEE 802.11p, and UMTS (3GPP network) are characterized by their high data transmission rates and wide range communication, respectively. By coupling the high data rates of IEEE 802.11p-based VANETs and the wide coverage area of 3GPP networks (e.g., UMTS), this paper introduces a VANET-UMTS integrated network architecture. As VANET possess dynamic topology, clustering of VANET is done to make the dynamic links stable. Vehicles are dynamically clustered according to different related metrics. From these clusters, a minimum number of vehicles, equipped with IEEE 802.11p and UTRAN interfaces, are selected as vehicular gateways to link VANET to UMTS. Design issues related to vehicle clustering and gateway management are defined. Simulations are carried out using NS2 to evaluate the performance of the integrated network architecture and encouraging results are obtained in terms of high data packet delivery ratio, reduced control packet overhead, and reduced packet drop rate. Keywords: VANET, UMTS, integrated architecture, clustering, adaptive mobile gateway
management.

I.

INTRODUCTION

The emerging wireless vehicular communication technologies are intended to improve safety and comfort of transportation systems. The ongoing advances in dedicated short range communication (DSRC) and wireless technologies, inter vehicular communication (IVC) and roadvehicle communication (RVC) [1] have given birth to a new network-type called vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET). VANET provides communication between vehicles without any central server. A Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network, or VANET is a technology that uses moving cars as nodes in a network to create a mobile network. VANET turns every participating car into a wireless router or node, allowing cars approximately 100 to 300 metres of each other to connect and, in turn, create a network with a wide range. As cars fall out of the signal range and drop out of the network, other cars can join in, connecting vehicles to one another so that a mobile Internet is created. It is estimated that the first systems that will integrate this technology each other for safety purposes. The key role that VANETs can play in the realization of intelligent transport systems has attracted the attention of major car manufacturers (e.g., Toyota, BMW, and DaimlerChrysler). A number of important projects have been subsequently launched. Crash Avoidance Metrics Partnership (CAMP)[4], Chauffeur[6] in Europe Union, CarTALK2000[7], FleetNet[8], and DEMO 2000 by the Japan Automobile Research Institute (JSK) are a few notable examples.
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EICA 076 An Efficient Scheme for Adaptive Mobile Gateway Management in Integrated VANET-UMTS Network

During the past several years, the applications of VANET have been increased to support Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). VANETs can be used for a plethora of applications, ranging from comfort and infotainment applications to onboard active safety applications. The applications of VANET include safety message dissemination, traffic management application such as traffic congestion information, dynamic route planning, commercial applications such as gaming and entertainment. VANET applications assist drivers in avoiding collisions[5]. Though VANET has many advantages and applications, some problems need to be overcome before VANETs can be employed widely. The major issues in VANET are their potential security, privacy and then smaller range of communication, i.e., vehicles can communicate only if the inter vehicular distance between them is within 300 m range. So to extend the communication range of VANET, Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks are expected to implement a variety of wireless technologies such as Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) which is a type of WiFi. Other candidate wireless technologies are Cellular, Satellite, and WiMAX. Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks can be viewed as component of the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). In this paper, an integration of VANET and UMTS 3G networks using mobile gateways (i.e.,vehicles) is introduced. As an integral part of the architecture, UMTS enables mobile data access to vehicles, offering a wide range of communication of around 8 to 10 km per BST. So by coupling the high data rates of IEEE 802.11p-based VANETs and the wide coverage area of GPP networks (e.g., UMTS), this paper envisions a VANET-UMTS integrated network architecture. The main purpose of our paper is to select only a minimum number of vehicles to communicate with the UMTS network as gateways. The next challenge in gateway management arises when the current serving gateway loses its optimality. At this instance, a gateway handover mechanism, with minimum overhead, is required for migration of the responsibilities of the existing gateway to a newly-elected optimal gateway.

II. PROPOSED VANET-UMTS ARCHITECTURE A. Architecture Description

Fig. 1 portrays the envisioned architecture, considering a scenario of two different tracks over a particular road (e.g., highway), with a track for each direction. The key components of the architecture are IEEE 802.11p-based VANET vehicles, a UMTS Node B and the main components of the UMTS core network. Communication over the VANET network is multihop and on a peer-to-peer basis. VANET is linked to UMTS via selected VANET mobile gateways using the Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN) interface. The main components of the UMTS network are Radio Network Controller (RNC), Base Station Transceiver (BST), Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN) and Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN) [20]. The VANET mobile gateway accesses the UMTS network via Node B BST using the Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (UTRAN) interface. The main purpose of our paper is to select only a minimum number of vehicles to communicate with the UMTS network as gateways. Referring to the architecture shown in
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Fig. 1, the VANET region under the coverage of UMTS BST, where the UMTS Received Signal Strength (RSS) is intense, is termed as the 3G active region. The vehicles, equipped with both the IEEE 802.11p and UMTS interfaces, lying within or moving into the 3G active region, are called Gateway Candidates (GWCs). The rest of the vehicles, that do not lie in the 3G Active Region, are not equipped with the UMTS interface, or do not have their UTRAN interfaces enabled are called Ordinary Vehicles (OVs). Among the gateway candidates, a minimum number of Cluster Heads (CHs) per direction are elected as optimal gateways (GWs) using different metrics. The number of gateways is required to be minimum, so as to avoid bottleneck at the UMTS BST and save UTRAN resources. Gateway candidates are grouped into clusters using dynamic clustering mechanism, and only the selected gateways will have their 3G UTRAN interfaces activated. However, the IEEE 802.11p interface is enabled and activated on all the VANET vehicles. B. Dynamic Gateways

The extension of Internet services to public transport passengers is slowly becoming inevitable. Several architectures for providing Internet access to moving vehicles have been evaluated in the past. However, most of these studies have focused on using static gateways, deployed on the roadside at fixed distances from each other, depending on their transmission range, which makes the overall system deployment costly. Furthermore, the dynamic and multi-hop nature of VANET communication impacts the stability of links to these gateways. Additionally, as these gateways are fixed, the routing and discovery mechanisms are mainly pro-active. Though pro-active routing mechanisms reduce delay, they increase the signaling overhead and require frequent changes in the pre-defined routing tables of vehicles. To cope with these shortcomings, this paper introduces a VANET-UMTS integrated network architecture and defines the concept of mobile gateways. A mobile gateway refers to the dual-interfaced vehicle that relays data from other vehicle sources to the UMTS backhaul network. It is enabled with dual interfaces of IEEE 802.11p and the UMTS UTRAN networks. The main challenge is to integrate these two network interfaces on a hybrid gateway node, as they lie in two different spectrum regions. C. Dynamic Clustering

This paper aims for clustering gateway candidates (i.e., to be described later) according to key relevant metrics and selecting out of each cluster, a cluster head that serves as the gateway to interface VANET with the UMTS network. In the existing literature, clustering within VANETs was performed based upon metrics such as vehicle velocity, inter-vehicular distance, and the direction

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Figure 1: VANET-UMTS Integrated Architecture of movement. Concerning the velocity, the variance in the speed of vehicles at different instances is not consistent. This variance in velocity results in drastic changes in the intervehicular distance because of the unpredictable behavior of drivers. As a result, different clusters of vehicles may b frequently formed, subsequently resulting in significant signaling overhead, service instability, and so forth. Instead of vehicular velocity, this paper envisions using the UMTS received signal strength metric of the vehicles for dynamic clustering mechanism, due to its relatively better consistency along a pre-defined direction. This shall subsequently elaborate upon the impact of the backbone 3G network on gateways. In addition to the UMTS signal strength, the direction of movement of vehicles and their intervehicular distance metrics are also considered for the purpose of dynamic clustering of vehicles. III. ADAPTIVE MOBILE GATEWAY MANAGEMENT Having performed clustering of vehicles in the considered VANET, we now focus on the selection of a minimum number of adequate gateways that will serve, for the vehicles of the cluster, as a point of attachment to the UMTS network. We envision an Adaptive Mobile Gateway Management mechanism, consisting of three major operations[9]: multi-metric mobile gateway selection, handover support, and gateway discovery and advertisement. The gateway selection mechanism is initiated to select a minimum number of optimal gateways when VANET sources desire to communicate with the UMTS network. The handover mechanism is employed for migrating the responsibilities of the currently serving gateway to one or more new gateways, when the serving gateway loses its optimality. The gateway discovery and advertisement operation is launched to inform the VANET nodes about a newly-selected gateway.

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Journal of Computer Applications ISSN: 0974 1925, Volume-5, Issue EICA2012-4, February 10, 2012

A. Gateway Selection Gateway selection is employed upon the available CHs of the GWC sub-cluster. It is based on the Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) technique[4]. The considered metrics of the CH are the mobility speed, the UMTS RSS, and the link stability. The link stability is defined by the LET and RET metrics between the source and the CH[1]. At a certain time instance, let (xi, yi, zi) and (xj, yj, zj) denote the Cartesian coordinates of two neighboring vehicles i and j, moving at speeds vi and vj , along two roads inclined at i and j (0 < i, j < 2) with respect to the x-axis, respectively. Let R denote the maximum wireless transmission range of the IEEE 802.11p interface of the two vehicles. LETij can be then computed as in Equation. Table 1: NS2 Simulation Parameters Parameters area Channel Propagation model Network Interface MAC Interface Peak Wireless Transmission Range Interface Queue Type Interface Queue length Antenna Type Routing Protocol Total number of VANET vehicles Peak Mobility speed Mobility Model UMTS RSS Threshold Transport-Layer protocol Application Packet Size LET = (ab + cd) +_(a2 + c2)r2 (ad bc)2 a2 + c2 where a =vi cos i vj cos j b =xi xj c =vi sin i vj sin j d =yi yj . B. Gateway Handover Values 100*100 Channel/WirelessChannel Propagation/Nakagami Phy/WirelessPhyExt Mac/802 11Ext 300m Queue/DropTail/PriQueue 20 packets Antenna/OmniAntenna AODV 50 30 ms1 Manhattan Mobility Model 94 dBM TCP/Newreno FTP 1 KB

The main concept behind the gateway handover approach is as follows. If the UMTS RSS of the gateway goes below the signal strength threshold and/or if the RET of the gateway with

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the source vehicle goes below its predetermined threshold, migration from the serving gateway to one or more gateways. C. Gateway Discovery/Advertisement

Gateway discovery and advertisement is done by Multi-metric Adaptive Gateway Migration mechanism (MAGMM) [4]. Table 2: NS2 Simulation Parameters for UMTS Parameters Uplink Frequency Downlink Frequency Peak UTRAN Uplink Channel Bit Rate Peak UTRAN Downlink Channel Bit Rate Transmission Range of UMTS Node B UMTS Node B - RNC Data Rate RNC - SGSN Data Rate SGSN - GGSN Data Rate GGSN - External IP network data rate Routing Protocol Value 1.925 GHz 2.115 GHz 384 Kbps 2 Mbps 7 km 622 Mbps (Transmission Time Interval (TTI): 1 ms) 622 Mbps (TTI: 1 ms) 622 Mbps (TTI: 10 ms) 10 Mbps (TTI: 15 ms) 3G Pro-active routing

It is focused to sustain the connectivity between the UMTS and MANET when either the residual energy of the Gateway or if which is 25% of the initial metric value of the Gateway Candidate. The Gateway seeks the metric information available from all the Gateway Candidates at that instance and computes the net scalable weight (Simple Additive weight) of the Gateway Candidates by the MGSA. It selects the Gateway Candidate with the maximum weight as the Gateway-Elect and forwards all new incoming transactions to it. The Gateway informs the current active sources of the Network about the Gateway-Elect using the hybrid Gateway Discovery mechanism. The Gateway broadcasts the periodic GWADV within the advertisement zone, which is measured as number of hops from the Gateway, corresponding to the TTL value, adaptively selected from the Gateway. Here, the GWADV zone is configured to be half of the total number of hops in the MANET. And those MANET nodes, lying outside the GWADV zone, reactively broadcast Gateway Solicitation (GWSOL) messages within the MANET. And if such GWSOL messages reach any node within the GWADV zone, the GWADV is forwarded to them. It does not require the GWSOL messages to reach the Gateway to get information about the Gateway. This Hybrid Gateway Discovery mechanism reduces both the delay and overhead. After its election, a newly elected gateway broadcasts periodic GWADV messages within its subcluster using the TTL value, which determines the gateway advertisement zone. Accordingly, the gateway candidates of that cluster get informed about the newly elected gateway. If the CH is not the gateway, then instead of GWADV, the CH sends periodic Cluster Advertisement (CA) within the cluster. When a vehicle desires to access the UMTS network via the gateway, it sends on demand Gateway Solicitation (GWSOL) messages, to which the first receiving GWC (or CH) in the corresponding cluster responds indicating the metric information of its CH.

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IV. SIMULATION The proposed Clustering-based Multi-metric adaptive mobile Gateway Management mechanism (CMGM) is implemented in the Network Simulator NS2.33[11]. We use the IEEE 802.11p Wireless Access in Vehicular Environment (WAVE) protocol which is defined in order to enable communication among high-speed vehicles or between a vehicle and a roadside infrastructure network. The scenario consists of a VANET connected to the UMTS network via the UTRAN interface. Tables I and II list the simulation parameters of the VANET and UMTS networks, respectively.

V. CONCLUSION In this paper, we introduced a novel architecture that integrates 3G/UMTS networks with VANET networks. In this architecture, a minimum number of gateways, per time instance, is selected to connect ordinary vehicles with the UMTS network. Route stability, mobility features, and signal strength of vehicles are all taken into consideration when clustering vehicles and selecting vehicle gateways. Gateway discovery and migration scenarios are also considered and adequate solutions are presented. The envisioned 3G/VANET integrated network with minimum number of gateways is expected to prevent frequent handoffs at UMTS base stations and the associated signalling overhead; an event more likely to occur when all vehicles connect directly to the UMTS network. By using this integrated VANET-3G network and having minimum number of optimal gateways at an instance, even vehicles without 3G interface can access the UMTS network. On other hand, by allowing more than one gateway to operate at an instance, bottlenecks and congestion across the path towards a single gateway can be eliminated. The performance of the overall architecture was evaluated using computer simulations and encouraging results were obtained.

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