Efficient and Reliable Cluster-Based Data Transmission for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Table 1

Notations.

Notation	Description
	Initial node
	Cluster head
	Cluster member
	Candidate cluster member
R	Communication range
	Vehicle i; i is the ID of vehicle
	Link lifetime between and
	Link reliability metric of
	Potential neighbor set of
	Stable neighbor set of
	Entry of in
	State of
	Initial timer for gathering information
	Join response timer
	Cluster head selection timer
	Cluster head acknowledgement message
	Join request message
	Join response message
	Cluster merging request message
	Cluster merging response message
	Cluster merging acknowledgment message
	Cluster member list in
	Number of vehicles in
	Maximum number of vehicles a CH can serve
	Potential merged cluster size
	Time threshold for neighbor sampling
	Time threshold for cluster merging
	Time threshold for isolated CH