A customizable visualization framework for VANET application design and development

Prototyping distributed applications for VANETs requires an accurate large-scale simulation scenario where many nodes interact with one another in a complex way. To test and troubleshoot the application, node states and their evolution must be inspected. This process can be made easier by an interactive graphical user interface showing the distributed state at different levels of detail. In this paper, we propose ELVS, a general purpose visualization framework encapsulating a VANET simulator based upon JiST/SWANS and SUMO: by customizing data representation, ELVS allows displaying and investigating complex application-specific behaviors. The tool enables the implementation and rapid validation of an application against a large-scale scenario, supporting the developer in debugging distributed algorithms.