Edinburgh Napier University

  The rapid advancement of vehicular communication technologies has led to the emergence of Vehicular AdHoc Networks (VANETs), which hold immense potential for improving road safety and traffic efficiency. VANETs enable vehicles to communicate with each other and with the roadside infrastructure, facilitating the exchange of critical safety information in real-time. The central aim of VANETs is the establishment of an Intelligent Transport System (ITS), to reduce accidents and fatalities on the road network and subsequently reduce congestion. VANETs comprise vehicles communicating with each other, either by Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) or Vehicle to-Infrastructure (V2I). Moreover, VANETs have been proven to be robust in providing vehicular communication in urban and highway environments. One of the key challenges in VANET design is selecting the most suitable routing protocol to ensure reliable and efficient dissemination of safety messages. The study investigates the performance of prominent routing protocols, including AODV, DYMO, and GPSR. Real-world scenarios are utilised to investigate the suitability of these routing algorithms in VANETS. The comparison is conducted based on several performance metrics including Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), Throughput and End-to End Delay. The obtained results reveal that GPSR, owing to its location-awareness, demonstrates superior throughput and end-to-end delay performance, making it well-suited for urban and highway environments. DYMO and AODV exhibit remarkable efficiency in non-safety scenarios. However, the findings reveal that none of the routing protocols are currently capable of meeting the requirements for real-time safety applications.