To support in an efficient way infotainment and public safety multicast applications in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANET), a fundamental aspect is the optimization of the broadcast capacity. The objective is to disseminate packet flows to a wide set of vehicles by extending the coverage area of the broadcast packet flows distributed from a Road Side Unit through the use of vehicle-to-vehicle multi-hop communications. To this aim, we synthesize and study Vehicular Backbone Network (VBN) systems. Several vehicles that are situated along the highway are dynamically self elected based on their locations along the highway, to act as relay nodes that disseminate and forward flow packets. We analytically provide rationale for the criteria to be used in electing relay nodes. This is based on the computation of targeted optimal geographical positions for them under which the system's broadcast capacity is maximized, while striving also to reduce the number of elected relay nodes.
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