Emulating a Realistic VANET Channel in Ns‐3

This chapter first describes the main aspects of the wireless vehicular ad‐hoc network (VANET) channel and underlines its central role in VANET communications. It presents the different modeling approaches to accurately simulate the VANET channel in ns‐2 and ns‐3. The chapter shows the effect of realistic channel propagation models on VANETs simulation, and provides a solution, which is a trade‐off between computing time and realism. In order to accurately simulate the effects of the wireless channel propagation on data transmission, two elements are required. First, a physical layer, which is compliant with the transmission standard considered (i.e. IEEE802.11p or WAVE for Wireless Access in Vehicular Environment [IEE 13]) and on which it is possible to accurately apply wireless channel effects. Second, a realistic channel part obtained either from real‐world measurements (statistical channel model) or by using deterministic ray‐tracing software.