Summary Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are a subset of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) that can be used to communicate in intelligent transportation systems. In VANETs, each node in the network is a vehicle that exchanges data wirelessly with other vehicles. Many authors have considered using unnamed aerial vehicle (UAV) nodes to improve connectivity in VANETs. In recent years, UAVs have been used to enhance communications in VANETs. In this paper, a routing method for VANETs using UAV nodes is presented. The proposed method has three phases. The first phase deals with routing operations between vehicles. In this phase, whenever a vehicle has a packet to send, it selects the next hop to send the packet from the neighbor vehicles based on the parameters of distance, speed difference, and direction difference. The second phase is dedicated to routing operations between the vehicle and the UAV. In this phase, the roadside unit selects the best UAV based on distance and remaining energy, and the vehicle sends data to the UAV. The third phase is dedicated to UAV routing operations, and a greedy routing method between the UAVs based on distance and energy is presented. The proposed method is compared with U2RV and UVAR methods in terms of packet delivery rate, end‐to‐end delay, number of hops, and control overhead. The simulation results showed that the proposed method has improved in terms of packet delivery rate, the number of hops, and end‐to‐end delay.

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