In this paper we present a novel vehicular communication protocol, which aims to reduce the effect of broadcast storm problem in VANETs. When the traffic density is above a certain value (e.g., when vehicles are in congested traffic scenarios), one of the most serious problems is the increase of packet collisions and medium contentions among vehicles which attempt to communicate. Our proposed technique, namely Selective Reliable Broadcast protocol (SRB), is intended to limit the number of packet transmissions, by means of opportunistically selecting neighboring nodes, acting as relay nodes. As a result, the number of forwarder vehicles is strongly reduced, while network performance is preserved. SRB belongs to the class of broadcast protocols, and exploits the traditional vehicular partitioning behavior to select forwarders. Each cluster is automatically detected as a zone of interest, whenever a vehicle is approaching, and packets will be forwarded only to selected vehicles, opportunistically elected as cluster-heads. In respect of traditional broadcast approaches, the main strengths of SRB are the efficiency of detecting clusters and selecting forwarders in a fast way, in order to limit the broadcast storm problem. Simulation results have been carried out both in urban and highway scenarios, in order to validate the effectiveness of SRB, in terms of cluster detection and reduction of number of selected forwarders.
