Social networking-based cooperation mechanisms in vehicular ad-hoc network—a survey

Abstract Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) is a sub-class of Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) where it is built up by moving vehicles. VANET is getting increasingly popular in traffic management especially in some of the developed countries. It can be categorized into safety related application where it can save thousands of lives daily and non-safety application for commercial purpose. Due to its unpredictable mobility and intermittent network connectivity, a reliable end-to-end path between source and destination is almost impossible and hence ad hoc routing protocols are applied in VANET. However, the biggest challenge in VANET is not the routing issue, but the cooperation between the nodes. Even the best routing protocol will not be useful when the nodes do not participate in forwarding the data. In this paper, we have presented a comprehensive review on existing cooperation mechanisms in VANETs; particularly, those that have built upon mobile social networking. First, we explore the existing challenges in VANET. Next, we discuss a taxonomy for existing cooperation mechanisms in VANETs and review the proposed solutions of each cooperation type. Moreover, we explain the cooperation solutions that can be applied from the concept of Mobile Social Networking. Finally, we come up with a conclusion that the concept of Mobile Social Networking could complement the traditional VANET cooperation mechanisms to stimulate node cooperation. The future research direction in VANET cooperation has been discussed as well.