Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) allow vehicles to exchange warning messages with each other. These specific kinds of networks help reduce hazardous traffic situations and improve safety, which are two of the main objectives in developing Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). For this, the performance of VANETs should guarantee the delivery of messages in a required time. An obstacle to this is that the data traffic generated may cause network congestion. Data congestion control is used to enhance network capabilities, increasing the reliability of the VANET by decreasing packet losses and communication delays. In this study, we propose a swarm intelligence based distributed congestion control strategy to maintain the channel usage level under the threshold of network malfunction, while keeping the quality-of-service of the VANET high. An exhaustive experimentation shows that the proposed strategy improves the throughput of the network, the channel usage, and the stability of the communications in comparison with other competing congestion control strategies.

翻译：车载自组织网络（VANETs）使车辆能够相互交换预警信息。这类特定网络有助于减少危险交通状况并提升安全性，这是发展智能交通系统（ITS）的两个主要目标。为此，VANETs的性能必须保证信息在要求时间内送达。一个阻碍因素是生成的数据流量可能导致网络拥塞。数据拥塞控制用于增强网络能力，通过减少丢包和通信延迟来提高VANET的可靠性。在本研究中，我们提出一种基于群体智能的分布式拥塞控制策略，旨在将信道使用率维持在网络故障阈值以下，同时保持VANET的高服务质量。详尽实验表明，与其他竞争性拥塞控制策略相比，所提策略在网络吞吐量、信道利用率和通信稳定性方面均有提升。