Design and Development of a WAVE Simulator Interoperable with Traffic Simulators

Vehicular communication technologies have gained recognition for their potential contribution to the improvement of the road safety and the traffic congestion. Despite the growing research interest in vehicular communications, currently available network simulators have shortcomings with respect to generation of accurate vehicle driving information. In this paper, we present a network simulator that is interoperable with traffic simulators for the purpose of utilizing more accurate vehicle driving information. The carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) of the IEEE Wireless Access in Vehicular Environment (WAVE) standard is implemented in the network simulator. The interface between the network simulator and the traffic simulator is designed to convert traffic simulation results into an acceptable input format for the network simulator. Our simulation results show that the proposed network simulator successfully demonstrates the inherent characteristic of the CSMA/CA of the IEEE WAVE standard.