###### Abstract  
In vehicle ad hoc networks (VANETs), a beacon is a periodic message sent to nearby vehicles containing essential details like the sender's vehicle ID, location, speed, and direction. Maintaining the freshness of this information without causing network congestion requires adaptive beaconing to adjust to changes in mobility and network density. Our research, based on extensive simulation experiments, identifies specific parameter sets optimal for adapting beaconing rates to different scenarios. From this analysis, we introduce a novel scheme called high-awareness and channel-efficient adaptive beaconing (HACEAB), employing fuzzy logic to adapt to various environments and conditions. Initially, the protocol gauges network density using an adaptive threshold function, followed by estimating the node spatial distribution through the quadrat statistic method to discern uniform distribution or clustering. Utilizing these data, the protocol adjusts beaconing rates via appropriate input parameters for the fuzzy logic system. Remarkably, HACEAB represents the first beaconing scheme capable of simultaneously adjusting to changes in network density and spatial distribution. Furthermore, the protocol enhances performance by adapting transmission power to fluctuations in node density and distribution. NS-3 simulations validate the efficacy of these improvements. a _et electronics_  
titletitle  
Meanwhile, the SCHs are allocated for comfort and driving efficiency messages. Beacons are exchanged over the control channel [9; 10], which is the most important channel in VANET communications. The dynamic topology is a challenging characteristic in VANETs, where the number and distribution of vehicles can quickly change. Furthermore, exchanging beacon messages at a fixed rate can cause the communication channel to be congested, which will affect the overall performance of vehicular networks [11; 12; 13; 14; 15]. Cooperative awareness is critical for VANETs because many applications depend on it to make the correct decision and launch the appropriate application to avoid dangerous situations. There are trade-offs between information freshness, cooperative awareness, and channel congestion. Sending beacons at high frequency is favorable because it can possibly increase cooperative awareness and improve the freshness of exchanged information. However, this leads to more congested networks and increases resource consumption. On the other hand, sending beacons at low frequency reduces network congestion and saves more bandwidth but leads to outdated information. Transmission power plays a very important role in terms of cooperative awareness and channel congestion. Increasing transmission power can allow more vehicles to communicate with each other and hence improve cooperative awareness. However, this leads to more congested channels and network resource saturation. On the other side, reducing transmission power can alleviate channel congestion since the number of vehicles that can hear beacons are fewer, but this affects cooperative awareness. Fixed transmission power is inappropriate in a VANET environment. Therefore, adaptive transmission power is highly recommended besides the adaptive transmission rate [16]. Due to those challenges, it is important to come up with an adaptive beaconing protocol that adapts its transmission parameters (transmission rate and transmission power) based on different situations, conditions, and environments. Thus, the main goal is to increase the cooperative awareness and information freshness without causing congestion in the network. In this paper, we present a new approach named high-awareness and channel-efficient adaptive beaconing (HACEAB), which employs fuzzy logic to dynamically adjust beaconing in diverse networking scenarios. The primary contribution of HACEAB is to utilize an adaptive threshold function which defines the network density. HACEAB uses the quadrat statistical method to determine the spatial distribution of vehicles in the network.