Low-Delay Path Selection for Cluster-Based Buffer-Aided Vehicular Communications

Channel gain based path selection has been recently proposed to simplify the network design of a cluster-based cross-layer multihop vehicular communications. In vehicular network systems, end-to-end packet delay increases with the growing number of vehicles associated in that path. In delay-sensitive application, the information exchange must be successfully carried out very quickly to ensure the quality of infotainment services. In the case of excessive packet delay, some important information either are needed to be enqueued before reaching the destination or are lost. The packet loss makes it impractical to deploy the network in practice. In this paper, a new delay-sensitive buffer-aided relay selection is proposed using the channel-based greedy scheduling algorithm (CGSA) to overcome the limitations imposed by processing delay. The proposed scheme significantly minimizes average delay by selecting a set of alternative paths based on individual node buffer status. This scheme has less packet delay than existing Max-link scheme with very close system performances, making it an ideal candidate for delay-sensitive applications. Finally, both analytical and simulation results are provided to demonstrate the performance improvement of the proposed algorithm compared with the existing relaying schemes.