Abstract
In this paper, we enhance CLWPR, a cross-layer optimized position-based routing protocol for urban VANET environments, introducing social aspects to its design so as to efficiently address misbehaving (selfish or malicious) nodes that intentionally drop packets and ultimately promote cooperation in the network. The proposed Social CLWPR protocol favors nodes with close favorable social relationship (family members, friends, users with trust connections) as next forwarder nodes, while nodes with explicit distrust connections as indicated from online social media are not preferred in the network. Social CLWPR performance is comparatively evaluated against CLWPR and it demonstrates improved performance in terms of packet delivery ratio.