VNS: An integrated framework for vehicular networks simulation

Vehicular networks are becoming one of the most important emerging technologies to enable Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). A strong research effort has been made in the last few years in the design and development of new systems using vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. Therefore, a large-scale evaluation of these networks is of critical importance. However, due to the prohibitive costs of real test-beds, computer simulation is the only viable solution. Building upon previous work, we extend the state-of-the-art in the field of vehicular simulation by proposing an integrated framework for Vehicular Networks Simulation (VNS). The key point of this framework is the complete integration between the mobility and network components, given the fact not only the networking dynamics are greatly dependent on the mobility aspect, but also the network-enabled applications can influence the mobility patterns of ITS systems. Finally, to demonstrate the capabilities of this framework, we provide a large-scale analysis of 802.11p-based communications when used for the exchange of status advertisements between vehicles. We ran simulations for different scenarios including the urban scenario of the city of Porto with a realistic mobility pattern.