2012 Second International Workshop on Vehicular Communications and Networking

Multi-objective OLSR optimization for VANETs

Jamal Toutouh, Enrique Alba
Dept. de Lenguajes y Ciencias de la Computacion
University of Malaga, ETSI Informatica
Campus de Teatinos, Malaga - 29071, Spain
{jamal, eat}@lcc.uma.es

AbstractVehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are
infrastructure-less and self-organized networks deployed among
vehicles and other road users. Due to the limitations of the
wireless technologies used and the rapid topology changes,
designing efficient routing protocols for VANETs is becoming
a major concern. In this study, we applied a multi-objective
optimization metaheuristic, in order to find efficient OLSR
parameterizations that improve the QoS of the OLSR RFC
and a previous optimized configurations. Our optimized
configuration significantly reduces OLSR scalability problems
keeping competitive packet delivery rates. The OLSR routing
overhead is reduced between 47% and 76% and the delivery
times are between 32% and 38% shorter when using our
optimized settings.
Index TermsVANETs; OLSR; NSGA-II; optimization
I. I NTRODUCTION
Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are infrastructure-
less and self-organized networks deployed in vehicular envi-
ronments for the communication between vehicles, elements
of roadside infrastructure, and pedestrian personal devices.
Such networks present the opportunity to develop cooperative
applications capable of gathering, processing, and distributing
road traffic information. IEEE 802.11p is one of the most
promising standards to allow wireless access in VANETs.
The limitation in coverage, the high mobility of the nodes,
and the presence of obstacles generate continuous link failures
among VANET nodes. As a matter of fact, the communica-
tions suffer from frequent topology changes, packet loss, and
network fragmentation. In order to face these problems, the
research community dedicates a great deal of effort to design
efficient MAC strategies [1] and routing protocols [2], [3].
Some VANET routing methods have been defined based on
prior ad hoc network architectures by targeting the specific
needs of vehicular environments [3].
In order to provide VANETs with efficient communications,
an optimal routing strategy that makes better use of resources
and offers the best quality-of-service (QoS) is needed. A
proper parameterization of these protocols can improve the
performance of the whole network, even making the difference
between a network that does or does not work, e.g., the
networks with high routing information exchange are more
likely to suffer from network congestion and cannot ensure
timely delivery of messages [4].
Thus, in the present study, we aim to solve an off-line
multi-objective optimization problem (MOP) to efficiently and
automatically tune OLSR [5], a widely used ad hoc routing
protocol. We have chosen OLSR as a use case, however the
methodology presented in this article can be directly applied
over any other protocol. OLSR has already been used in
VANETs research [6], [7], [8], [9], since it offers a series of
features that make it well-suited for VANETs: it exhibits short
delays in the transmission of data packets, it adapts well to
continuous topology changes, and it allows a simple operation,
allowing an easy integration into different kinds of devices.
The main drawback of OLSR is that the excessive routing
load can cause network congestion, then limiting the data
packets exchange. However, as shown in this study and in [10],
[11], it admits a wide range of improvement by changing the
configuration parameters.
The methodology used here consists in exploring the search
space defined by all possible feasible OLSR configurations
using the non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm, version II
(NSGA-II) [12] to find optimized parameter settings. In this
context, we decide that an efficient OLSR configuration should
maximize the packet delivery ratio and minimize the packet
delivery delays. In turn, this configuration should minimize
the routing workload to mitigate network congestion problems.
The evaluation of the solutions (tentative configurations) is car-
ried out by analyzing the communications in realistic VANET
scenarios by using the ns-2 network simulator [13]. Finally,
the best OLSR configuration found, the best one presented
in [11], and the OLSR RFC 3626 settings are analyzed in
different VANET scenarios to validate the results.
In summary, the main contributions of our work are: i)
to propose an optimization strategy in which the NSGA-II
is coupled with a VANET simulator to find efficient OLSR
configurations, that can be generalized to be applied over any
other protocol; ii) to suggest new OLSR configurations whose
QoS are better than the RFC 3626 defined configuration;
and iii) to validate the results by comparing a set of OLSR
configurations in realistic VANET scenarios taken from the
metropolitan area of Malaga (Spain).
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In
the next section, we introduce some approaches on routing
optimization. Section III describes the OLSR QoS optimiza-
tion problem. Section IV presents the NSGA-II algorithm.
Section V describes the optimization methodology followed
to tackle the problem. Section VI presents the experiments
carried out, as well as the results, comparisons, and analyses.
Finally, conclusions and further work are presented in Sec-
tion VII.

978-1-4673-1430-5/12/$31.00 2012 IEEE 571

 II. R ELATED W ORK
The volatility of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs)
and VANETs critically limits their performance in terms of
throughput and coverage. For this reason, there is a great deal
of effort being made to provide MANET and VANET with
efficient communications by means of protocol optimization.
In this area, most of studies have focused on obtaining
improvements in terms of both the QoS offered (maximizing
packet delivery rates, minimizing delivery delays, etc.) and in
resource consumption, e.g. minimizing power requirements.
Most of the defined protocol optimization problems are multi-
objective with objectives conflicting in nature. These kinds of
optimization problems usually show high complexity due to
the huge number of possible solutions. Thus, the use of auto-
matic intelligent tools is a mandatory requirement when facing
them. Along these lines, metaheuristic algorithms [14] have
emerged as efficient techniques able to solve such problems.
Multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs), as
NSGA-II, CellDE, PAES, etc., have emerged as metaheuristics
that are able to find a set of solutions, which optimize two
or more conflicting objectives given a problem [15]. The use
of MOEAs to solve protocol optimization problems provides
solutions that optimize to varying degrees different QoS or
resources consumption metrics. Thus, the network designer is
able to select a solution (protocol configuration) depending on
the specific needs of the network.
Several studies have applied MOEAs to solving MANET
optimization problems. Alba et al. [17] applied a specialized
cellular multi-objective GA for finding an optimal configura-
tion for the Delayed Flooding with Cumulative Neighborhood
broadcasting strategy. Ruiz et al. [18], [19] applied a hybrid
multi-objective optimization algorithm (CellDE) to maximize
the coverage and minimize the power consumption and broad-
cast time of the EDB protocol, and Abdou et al. [20] employed
different multi-objective optimization algorithms to optimize
a broadcasting strategy in mobile networks.
In the literature, however, there is a lack of studies applying
MOEAs to solve protocol optimization problems in vehicular
networks. The multi-objective protocol optimization problem
has usually been transformed into a single objective problem
by defining a weighted factor function of each objective.
This means the problem is solved by using a mono-objective
metaheuristic, resulting in a single optimized solution based on
the value of combined objective function. Unfortunately, the
solution obtained by this process depends largely on the values
assigned to the weighting factors. Various studies have used
this strategy to solve such problems: a set of mono-objective
metaheuristics were used to find efficient parameter settings
for VDTP [21], AODV [22], and OLSR [11], [23] protocols.
Here, we study the application of the NSGA-II multi-
objective algorithm to solve the off-line optimization problem
of finding QoS efficient OLSR settings. In previous com-
prehensive analysis, the off-line mono-objectively optimized
protocols significantly improved the standard ones in several
VANET scenarios that reflect different traffic situations [16].
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III. E FFICIENT OLSR FOR VANET S
Exchanging real-time information among vehicles is the
most salient feature of VANETs. In this sense, data packets
travel through the network nodes to reach the destination
node. Finding efficient routing paths is a complex task due
to the volatility of the network and the absence of any central
manager. Distributed routing protocols operate in the core of
VANETs, they compute updated paths among the nodes to
permit an effective information exchange.
The methodology presented here can be applied over any
other VANET protocol. In our case study, we have chosen
OLSR [5] for a use case, as it presents a series of features that
make it suitable for VANETs: i) it adapts well to the frequent
and rapid topological changes because it follows a proactive
strategy, ii) its simple operation allows an easy integration
into existing devices and operating systems, and iii) it is
appropriate for most VANET warning applications due to its
short transmission delays. The main drawback of OLSR is the
excessive routing workload generated to maintain the routing
table updated, such traffic may provoke network congestion.
A. Optimized Link State Routing Protocol
Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) is a proactive link-
state routing protocol specifically designed for ad hoc net-
works with low bandwidth and high mobility. OLSR uses a
subset of special nodes of the network that acts as multipoint
relays (MPRs) to periodically broadcast the routing control
information. This way, it reduces the number of required
transmissions, trying to limit the network workload [5].
Two processes neighborhood discovery and topology dis-
semination mainly govern the core functionality of this
protocol. Such processes exchange three types of messages [5]:
HELLO messages, exchanged between neighbor nodes
for link sensing, neighborhood detection, and MPR se-
lection. Periodically, they are generated containing infor-
mation about the links between the network interfaces.
TC (topology control) messages, generated by MPRs to
indicate which other nodes have selected it as MPR. They
are forwarded to the nodes through the entire network.
The information is used for routing table calculations.
MID (multiple interface declaration) messages are sent to
report information about the network interfaces employed
to participate in the network, since a node can have
multiple interfaces with distinct addresses participating
in the communications.
The OLSR processes are regulated by a set of parameters
predefined in the OLSR RFC 3626 [5] (see Table I). These
parameters are: the timeouts before resending HELLO, MID,
and TC messages (HELLO INTERVAL, MID INTERVAL, and
TC INTERVAL, respectively); the validity time of the in-
formation received via these three message types, which
are: NEIGHB HOLD TIME (HELLO), MID HOLD TIME
(MID), and TOP HOLD TIME (TC); the WILLINGNESS of
a node to act as an MPR; and DUP HOLD TIME, that
represents the time during which the MPRs record information
about the forwarded packets.
 TABLE I
M AIN OLSR PARAMETERS AND OLSR RFC 3626 SPECIFIED VALUES .
Parameter Standard value Range
HELLO INTERVAL 2.0 s R [2.0, 15.0]
MID INTERVAL 2.0 s R [5.0, 15.0]
TC INTERVAL 5.0 s R [4.0, 35.0]
WILLINGNESS 3 Z [0, 7]
NEIGHB HOLD TIME 3 HELLO INTERVAL R [5.5, 45.0]
MID HOLD TIME 3 TC MID R [10.5, 90.0]
TOP HOLD TIME 3 TC INTERVAL R [10.5, 90.0]
DUP HOLD TIME 30.0 s R [10.5, 90.0]
B. OLSR Quality of Service Optimization in VANETs
The performance of the communication protocols depends
on the selection of the parameter settings that determine
their behavior, e.g., in OLSR, the detection of topological
changes can be adjusted by changing the HELLO INTERVAL
parameter. Thus, optimized configurations could decisively
improve the protocols QoS and resources consumption.
The standard configuration of OLSR offers a moderate QoS
when is used in VANETs [9]. Hence, taking into account
the impact of the parameters configuration in the network
performance, we tackled the OLSR QoS MOP to discover
efficient protocol configurations. We have computed the ranges
for each parameter by following OLSR RFC restrictions for
taking into account just feasible configurations (see Table I).
Following this idea, we have defined a solution vector of real
variables that can be fine tuned by using an optimization
technique with the aim of obtaining QoS efficient OLSR
configurations for VANETs.
We have employed three of the most commonly used QoS
metrics in this area [7] to evaluate the computed OLSR con-
figurations (tentative solutions) and guide the search process:
Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR): the fraction of the data
packets originated by an application that are delivered.
Normalized Routing Load (NRL): the ratio of routing
packet transmissions to data packets delivered.
End-to-End Delay (E2ED): the time spent from the packet
is originated until is received at its destination.
Therefore, an efficient OLSR parameter setting for VANETs
maximizes PDR and minimizes NRL and E2ED.
The search of possible combinations of OLSR parameter
values is not an easy problem. The dimension of the search
space increases exponentially with both the number and the
range of possible parameter values. Thus, exact search meth-
ods are not useful for efficiently solving the problem. In this
context, we have employed NSGA-II to compute accurate
efficient configurations in reasonable times.
IV. N ON - DOMINATED S ORTING G ENETIC A LGORITHM -II
A MOP means to optimize a group of objective functions,
that are generally in conflict with each other. Unlike in a
single-objective problem, there is not a unique optimized
solution, but a set of solutions that represent different trade-
offs among the optimized functions. A generic formulation of
a minimization MOP is [12]:
min F(x) = (f1 (x), f2 (x), . . . , fk (x))
subject to G(x) = (g1 (x), g2 (x), . . . , gj (x)) 0
x as a vector with eight genes, one for each parameter.
A MOP solution is a vector of decision variables x
(solution vector) which satisfies the constraints formulated by
the functions G(x), offering adequate trade-off values for the
functions fi (x). Considering a minimization MOP, a solution
w is said to dominate the other solution v (it is denoted
w v), if fi (x) fi (w) j/fj (x) > fj (w). The set
of optimal solutions for a MOP is composed by the non-
dominated feasible vectors, named Pareto optimal set. It is
defined by P = {x /x , F(x )  F(x)}. The
region of points defined by the optimal Pareto set in the
objective function space is known as Pareto front, formally
defined by P F = {(f1 (x), . . . , fk (x)), x P }.
NSGA-II is a multi-objective version of the well-known
genetic algorithm (GA) [12] and it is one of the reference
algorithms to solve MOPs. Its pseudocode is presented in
Algorithm 1. NSGA-II makes use of a population (P ) of
solution vectors (known as individuals). In each generation, it
works by creating new individuals after applying the genetic
operators to P (recombination and mutation), in order to create
a new population Q (lines 5 to 8). Then, both the current
(P ) and the new population (Q) are joined; the resulting
population, R, is ordered according to a ranking procedure
and a density estimator known as crowding distance (line 13).
For further details, please see [12]. Finally, the population P
is updated with the best individuals in R (line 14). These steps
are repeated until the termination condition is fulfilled.
Algorithm 1 Pseudocode of NSGA-II.
1: P initialize population() // P = population
2: Q // Q = auxiliary population
3: while not termination condition() do
4: for i 1 to (nsga-II.popSize / 2) do
5: parentsselection(P)
6: offspringrecombination(nsga-II.Pc,parents)
7: offspringmutation(nsga-II.Pm,offspring)
8: evaluate fitness(offspring)
9: insert(offspring,Q)
10: end for
11: RPQ
12: ranking and crowding(nsga-II, R)
13: P select best individuals(nsga-II, R)
14: end while
V. NSGA-II FOR OLSR O PTIMIZATION
In this work, the search for efficient OLSR parameter set-
tings is carried out by the NSGA-II algorithm. The evaluation
of tentative solutions involves realistic ns-2 VANET simula-
tions in which the nodes use the tentative OLSR configuration
(see Fig. 1). After the simulation, the ns-2 output is analyzed
to obtain the PDR, NRL, and E2ED to evaluate the solution.
We use the NSGA-II implementation available in the jMet-
alCpp library [24]. In order to better adapt NSGA-II to
the search for efficient OLSR parameter settings, we decide
to introduce some variations to the canonical initialization,
recombination, and mutation operators. We present the details
of these operators bellow.
A. Problem Encoding
The OLSR protocol is governed by eight different configu-
ration parameters, as presented in Table I. As shown in Fig. 2,
the NSGA-II solutions are represented by individuals encoded
573

Fig. 1. Optimization methodology followed in this work.
The first three genes are real valued, and they represent
the timeout timers before resending control messages (HE-
LLO INTERVAL, MID INTERVAL, and TC INTERVAL,
respectively). The forth one encodes the WILLINGNESS,
then taking an integer value from zero to seven. Finally,
the last four are real valued, and they denote the timeout
hold timers (NEIGHB HOLD TIME, MID HOLD TIME,
TOP HOLD TIME, and DUP HOLD TIME, respectively).
The valid ranges for each gene are presented in Table I.
C. Recombination
The genetic information exchange among the individuals
(solutions) is carried out by a modified version of N-point
crossover operator for real-valued problem encodings. It de-
fines a linear combination of two chromosomes Parent A and
Parent B to generate two new individuals Offspring A and
Offspring B. We include problem-related information in the
operator to avoid pointless configurations.
The concept of related-genes is defined to refer to
those genes that represent OLSR parameters which
have relation between their values described in the
OLSR RFC 3626. There are three pairs of related-
genes: HELLO INTERVAL and NEIGHB HOLD TIME;
MID INTERVAL and MID HOLD TIME; and
TC INTERVAL and TOP HOLD TIME. Thus, we
have defined five different possible gene exchanges (see
Fig. 3): the related-genes (Crossover-1 to Crossover-3), the
WILLINGNESS (Crossover-4), and the DUP HOLD TIME
(Crossover-5). Each time that the recombination operator
is called three of these five genes exchanges are randomly
applied to create the final offspring.

Fig. 2. Solution encoding for the energy-aware OLSR tunning problem.

B. Initialization
The population initialization should distribute the individ-
uals uniformly in the search space as much as possible.
However, this uniform pattern is not easy to obtain when
using random operators and small populations. Therefore,
we propose using a uniform initialization to ensure that the
initial population contains individuals from different areas of
the search space. The initialization operator splits the search
space into pop diagonal subspaces (where pop is size of the Fig. 3. Solution encoding for the energy-aware OLSR tunning problem.
population), and it forcibly ensures that there is an individual
D. Mutation
located in each diagonal subspace [25]. The following equa-
The mutation operator introduces new genetic information,
tions summarize the initialization procedure.
and therefore, diversity to the population of the NSGA-
(0) 0
, high0p,i


xp,i = rand lowp,i i [0, 7], p [0, pop 1] (1) II. After analyzing the algorithm of the OLSR protocol,
0
we decide to introduce some problem-related information in
lowp,i = (p z sizei,pop ) + z(i,MIN ) (2) the mutation operator (see Equation 5). Thereby, the new
(0)
high0p,i = lowi + z sizei,pop (3) genetic information is randomly generated, always ensuring
the feasibility of the resulting mutated individual. More-
z(i,MAX) z(i,MIN )
z sizei,pop = (4) over, when a gene is modified it is checked whether the
pop related-genes continue fulfilling the restrictions defined in
the OLSR RFC. If there is a restriction that is not satisfied
For each gene i that encodes the i-th OLSR parameter,
then the related gene is also mutated taking into account
we divide the range of values into pop equal segments (see
the information about the previously mutated gene. For ex-
Equation 4, where z(i,MAX) and z(i,MIN ) are the upper
ample, when HELLO INTERVAL is modified it is checked
and lower values for the i-th parameter following the ranges
whether the NEIGHB HOLD TIME fulfills the restriction
defined in Table I). So, according to Equation 1, the initial
(NEIGHB HOLD TIME > HELLO INTERVAL).
value for each gene i in the solution vector that encodes the
(0)
p-th individual (xp,i ) is set to a randomly distributed value in
0 (g+1)
and high0p,i ).


the p-th segment (bounded between lowp,i xp,i = rand z(i,MIN ) , z(i,MAX) (5)

574
 VI. E XPERIMENTAL A NALYSIS
This section presents the experimentation carried out in
the multi-objective optimization of OLSR by using NSGA-
II algorithm and ns-2 simulator, as the validation process. The
details of the NSGA-II implementation are described in the
previous section. The simulations are performed by using the
ns-2.34 extended with UM-OLSR [26]. The study is carried
out by running 30 independent runs of NSGA-II in a Gigabit
Ethernet cluster of Pentium IV 2.4 GHz cores, 1 GB RAM,
and O.S. Linux Fedora core 6.
A. Urban VANET Scenarios
The simulation testbed is composed of 18 urban VANET
scenarios covering a real urban area of Malaga (Spain) by
taking into account different road traffic densities and network
workloads. Tables II and III summarize the main features of
the scenarios used in our experimentation.
Fig. 4. Malaga urban areas taken into account in each VANET scenario.
The vehicular environment is generated by using the
SUMO [27] traffic simulator, taking into account a 240,000m2
area from a suburb of Malaga (see Fig. 4). Different road
traffic densities named L (low), M (medium), and H (high)
are also defined. Thus, we study how the compared OLSR
configurations perform when the network size and road traffic
density change. In these geographical areas, there are different
number of vehicles moving through the roads following real
traffic rules during three minutes (see Table II).
TABLE II
VANET SCENARIOS DETAILS .
scenario name # of vehicles CBR sources
L (low) 20 10
M (medium) 30 15
H (high) 40 20
In each scenario, there is a number of data exchanges
between pairs of vehicles. The data is generated by a constant
bit rate (CBR) generator for 60 seconds. The number of
vehicles that generate the information (CBR sources) to be
sent to the other nodes depends on the VANET scenario (see
Table II). In turn, we have defined different scenarios by
using six different traffic data rates to experiment with several
575
network workloads. They are grouped in low-rates (33, 66,
and 100 kbps) and high-rates (333, 666, and 1000 kbps).
The vehicles network devices employ the evaluated OLSR
parameterization. Table III summarizes the main features of
the network used in our VANETs simulations.
TABLE III
VANET COMMUNICATIONS SPECIFICATION .
parameter value/protocol
Propagation model Nakagami
Carrier Frequency 5.89 GHz
Medium Capacity 6 Mbps
PHY/MAC Layer IEEE 802.11p
Routing Layer OLSR
Transport Layer UDP
CBR Packet Size 512 bytes
500 kbps
CBR Data Rate 33/66/100 kbps
333/666/1000 kbps
CBR Time 60 s
Ns-2 is used to evaluate the VANET communications.
With the aim of reflecting the network interactions in a
trustworthy manner, the simulated vehicles are equipped with
Unex DCMA-86P2, a real transceiver specifically designed to
support IEEE 802.11p. In turn, the fading Nakagami radio
propagation model representing the WAVE radio propagation
in urban scenarios [28] is included in the simulations .
B. Optimization Performance
This section presents the quality of results and the com-
putational efficiency of the optimization method employed.
We perform 30 independent runs of the steady state NSGA-II
that is configured with eight individuals that evolve during 65
generations, a crossover probability Cr=0.9, and a mutation
factor =0.125. The evaluation of the tentative solutions is
carried out by invoking the simulation of such a configuration
over the low traffic density scenario (20 vehicles) in which the
there are ten data transfers of 60 seconds with a data rate of
500 kbps. This scenario is named L-500kbps.
After the experimentation, we computed the global Pareto
front by gathering the non-dominated solutions found in the
30 independent runs, which is composed by 44 non-dominated
solutions (OLSR configurations). These solutions present dif-
ferent trade-offs among the optimized QoS metrics.
The distance of the solutions to the ideal vector [15] is
employed to compare the obtained configurations. The ideal
vector contains the optimum for each separately considered
objective achieved at the same point in the search space. Thus,
this vector presents the best theoretical solution assuming
equally weighted objectives. For this reason, we have mea-
sured the quality of the solutions giving that the QoS metrics
are equally important by using their distance to the ideal
vector. In this work, the ideal vector has three components
that are the obtained maximum PDR and minimum NRL and
E2ED during the optimization process (99.96, 0.38, 1.69).
 We focus on the solutions that produce the best values for
each QoS metric maximum PDR (max-PDR), minimum NRL
(min-NRL), and minimum E2ED (min-E2ED) and the closest
one to the ideal vector (min-distance). Table IV presents their
QoS and distance to the ideal vector. In turn, it shows the QoS
achieved by the OLSR RFC 3626 (OLSR-RFC) configuration.
Finally, the last row contains the median value for each metric
for the 44 non-dominated solutions found.
TABLE IV
Q O S RESULTED SIMULATING THE OLSR RFC 3626 AND FOUR
OPTIMIZED CONFIGURATIONS OVER L-500kbps VANET SCENARIO , AND
MEDIAN VALUES FOR THE WHOLE PARETO FRONT.

configuration PDR NRL E2ED distance Fig. 5. Normalized QoS metrics of the Pareto front solutions.
min-distance 99.93% 1.02% 2.45ms 0.120
Finally, in terms of the computational effort required to
max-PDR 99.96% 1.01% 2.52ms 0.124
automatically obtain QoS efficient OLSR settings, the exe-
min-NRL 79.10% 0.38% 3.72ms 0.238
cution time for each NSGA-II execution is measured. The
min-E2ED 24.54% 2.02% 1.69ms 1.024
mean execution time is 2.1765E+4 seconds (about 6 hours)
OLSR-RFC 78.33% 5.16% 66.04ms 1.198 with a deviation of 8.24%. This relative low effort in the
NSGA-IImed 75.60% 0.74% 2.43ms 0.192 protocol design is completely justified by the subsequent
benefits obtained in the quality of the communications, as we
The max-PDR configuration delivers almost all the data show in the following analysis.
packets (PDR=99.96), it does not generate an excessive routing
overhead and the packets reach the destination nodes in C. Experimental Validation
competitive times. The min-NRL settings generates 13 times A set of VANET simulations involving the 18 urban sce-
lesser control messages than the RFC 3626 configuration narios presented in Section VI-A are carried out to compare a
(min-NRL NRL=0.38% and OLSR-RFC NRL=5.16%). How- MO optimized configuration with the OLSR RFC 3626 (RFC)
ever, the routing tables are updated less often, producing a and with PSO-OLSR, another optimized version of OLSR
reduction in the performance in terms of PDR and E2ED. computed with mono-objective PSO algorithm [11].
The configuration that delivers the data packets in shortest As we do not focus on any specific VANET application, we
times (E2ED=1.69ms), the min-E2ED, is the optimized con- have taken into account the min-distance OLSR configuration
figuration that generated the largest NRL. In turn, this is the in the validation experiments because it is the most
least balanced configuration of the studied ones because it balanced configuration of the Pareto front, and therefore,
provokes a severe drop of delivered packets (PDR=24.51%). it presents the most competitive trade-off among the QoS
The closest configuration to the ideal vector (min-distance) metrics. The min-distance parameterization is HELLO INT=
presents the most balanced QoS, since it offers the second 4.368, REFRESH INT=34.222, TC INT=14.852, WILL-
best values for each metric being these values close to the INGNESS=1, NEIGHB H T=44.808, MID H T=14.852,
best ones (PDR=99.93%, NRL=1.01%, and E2ED=2.45ms). TOP H T=73.920, and DUP H T=10.935.
Globally, the optimized configurations drastically reduce the The experimental validation evaluates the three QoS metrics
delivery times (E2ED=2.43ms) and the routing workload used during the optimization process and also the size of the
(NRL=0.74%) keeping similar packet delivery rates concern- routing paths regarding the number of hops required to reach
ing to the OLSR RFC 3626. the destination, named Routing Path Length (RPL). Table V
Fig. 5 shows the normalized values of the three optimized shows the average results grouped by road traffic density.
objectives for the Pareto front solutions ranked according to TABLE V
the distance to the ideal vector. Thus, the solution number one VALIDATION EXPERIMENTS RESULTS GROUPED BY TRAFFIC DENSITY.
is the closest solution to the ideal vector and number 44 is the config.
QoS metrics
PDR NRL E2ED RPL
furthest from it. The solutions are grouped in three sets (Set A, urban L scenario
Set B, and Set C) according to their QoS in comparison with min-distance 76.05% 3.40% 27.67ms 1.16
PSO-OLSR 80.74% 6.23% 32.14ms 1.18
the OLSR RFC. Set A contains the first 19 solutions, which RFC 85.96% 16.61% 63.14ms 1.10
significantly improve the studied QoS metrics. Set B groups urban M scenario
min-distance 62.21% 4.10% 88.36ms 1.40
the solutions which reduce NRL and E2ED with a slight loss PSO-OLSR 58.46% 9.35% 132.51ms 1.52
of PDR (<15%). Finally, Set C presents the less competitive RFC 69.94% 18.70% 137.68ms 1.19
urban H scenario
solutions, which reduce both, NRL and E2ED, but suffer a min-distance 49.86% 8.18% 151.14ms 1.93
PDR degradation greater than 15%. This figure confirms the PSO-OLSR 49.49% 14.05% 216.19ms 2.02
RFC 52.64% 29.67% 231.16ms 1.41
results presented in Table IV, since most of solutions improve average
or keep the PDR while reducing significantly the NRL and the min-distance 62.71% 5.23% 89.06ms 1.50
PSO-OLSR 62.90% N 9.88% N 126.94ms 1.58
E2ED regarding OLSR-RFC. RFC N 69.51% N 21.70% N 143.99ms N 1.23

576
 With the aim of providing the comparison with statistical
confidence, we apply Wilcoxon signed-rank statistical test [29]
to compare the distribution of the results of PSO-OLSR and
RFC against the MO optimized configurations (min-distance).
The confidence level is set to 95% (p-value<0.05). The results
of this test are presented in the two last rows of Table V by
using triangles. On the one hand, the black triangle (N) means
that there exists a statistical difference against min-distance.
On the other hand, the white one () means that there is not
statistical difference.
Summarizing the results presented in Table V and figures 6,
7, and 8, we observe that the QoS offered by these three
protocols gets worse the PDR decreases and the NRL, E2ED,
and RPL increases with the road traffic density, and therefore,
with the number of nodes connected in the network.
By examining the PDR indicator (see Fig. 6), we can check
that both optimized routing protocols behaved similarly. The
average difference between their PDR is lower than 0.20%.
However, the RFC configuration delivers a larger number of
packets, even its performance gets close to the optimized
configurations in the high road traffic density scenario (H).
Fig. 6. PDR results grouped by road traffic density.
The most important improvement of the configuration found
by NSGA-II appears in the routing traffic workload (NRL). As
Fig. 7 shows, the RFC configuration generates between three
and five times more routing traffic than our computed min-
distance configuration. In turn, the multi-bjective optimized
configuration of OLSR reduces between 41% and 56% the
routing load generated by PSO configuration.
Fig. 7. NRL results grouped by road traffic density.
Concerning E2ED (see Fig. 8), the times transferring data
packets are significantly shorter when the min-distance OLSR
configuration is used. On average, the packets require 89.06 ms
to reach the destination node, which is a 32% and 38% less
time than when the PSO and RFC ones are used, respectively.
577
Fig. 8. E2ED results grouped by road traffic density.
Finally, the routing paths generated by the standard OLSR
configuration are shorter than the ones generated by the
optimized configurations. However, on average, the routes
computed by the three studied configurations require lesser
than 1.6 hops to reach the destination nodes, which is a
competitive length in highly dynamic networks as VANETs.
Globally, we observe that the RFC configuration delivers
more data packets through the shortest routing paths. However,
the differences with the optimized configurations decrease in
the highest road traffic density. This is because the standard
configuration exchanges more routing messages in order to
maintain the routing tables up to date. The min-distance con-
figuration is the most robust in terms of resources consumption
and scalability. It produces statistically the least routing load
with a degradation lower than 7% in the PDR. In turn, the
reduction of routing overhead mitigates the OLSR congestion
and medium access problems, and therefore, even when the
routing paths are longer the packets reach the destination nodes
in significantly shorter times.
VII. C ONCLUSION
The design of efficient protocol communications is an
important issue in VANETs deployment. In this study, we have
analyzed the use of an automatic intelligent method to obtain
QoS optimized OLSR configurations by coupling a MOEA,
NSGA-II, and the ns-2 simulator. So, the main contribution
of this study is the application of a MOEA to a VANET
protocol optimization, avoiding the problems of using mono-
objective optimization metaheuristics and the weighted factors
functions. Moreover, the NSGA-II optimized configuration
found is validated comparing it against the mono-objective
PSO optimized settings and the standard one in RFC 3626,
studying their performance in terms of QoS in 18 urban
VANET scenarios.
Regarding the VANET communications, the experimental
analysis demonstrates that significant improvements are ob-
tained in terms of routing overhead when using the QoS opti-
mized configurations by NSGA-II (average routing workload
reduction of 47% and 76% regarding PSO and OLSR RFC
configurations, respectively), mitigating the OLSR congestion
problem. In turn, this feature makes this routing the most
robust in terms of resources consumption and scalability of
the compared configurations. In addition, the reduction of
the routing protocol medium accesses statistically improves
the packet delivery times even when the computed paths are
slightly longer with regard to the OLSR RFC 3626 config-
uration (E2ED is up to 38% lower). All these features are
achieved with a PDR degradation lower than 7% as regards
RFC.
The optimization methodology used in this study (coupling
NSGA-II multi-objective algorithm and VANET simulations
in the evaluation process analysis) offers the possibility of au-
tomatically and efficiently customizing any VANET protocol,
not just OLSR. In turn, this approach can be used to improve
other existing strategies applied over OLSR that appear in the
literature. This is an added value of this line of research.
The main lines of future research are related to the issue
of improving the method used in the automatic search to
find optimized QoS OLSR configurations for VANETs. The
application of other MOEAs should be considered, including
new QoS metrics, such as the RPL. In turn, the parallelization
of the population evaluation by multithreading techniques
could allow the use of larger populations and number of
generations used in these optimization methods with the conse-
quent improvement of the search of new solutions. Finally, the
approach proposed in this paper could be extended by using
several VANET scenarios to evaluate each OLSR tentative
configuration to obtain even more accurate results.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Authors acknowledge funds from the CICE, Junta An-
dalucia, under contract P07-TIC-03044 (DIRICOM project)
and Spanish Ministry of Sciences and Innovation (MICINN)
and FEDER under contracts TIN2011-28194 (roadME) and
TIN2008-06491-C04-01 (M*). Jamal Toutouh is supported by
grant AP2010-3108 from the Spanish Government.
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