  Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANET) enable efficient communication between
vehicles with the aim of improving road safety. However, the growing number of
vehicles in dense regions and obstacle shadowing regions like Manhattan and
other downtown areas leads to frequent disconnection problems resulting in
disrupted radio wave propagation between vehicles. To address this issue and to
transmit critical messages between vehicles and drones deployed from service
vehicles to overcome road incidents and obstacles, we proposed a hybrid
technique based on fog computing called Hybrid-Vehfog to disseminate messages
in obstacle shadowing regions, and multi-hop technique to disseminate messages
in non-obstacle shadowing regions. Our proposed algorithm dynamically adapts to
changes in an environment and benefits in efficiency with robust drone
deployment capability as needed. Performance of Hybrid-Vehfog is carried out in
Network Simulator (NS-2) and Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO) simulators.
The results showed that Hybrid-Vehfog outperformed Cloud-assisted Message
Downlink Dissemination Scheme (CMDS), Cross-Layer Broadcast Protocol (CLBP),
PEer-to-Peer protocol for Allocated REsource (PrEPARE), Fog-Named Data
Networking (NDN) with mobility, and flooding schemes at all vehicle densities
and simulation times.
