Modeling and simulation of vehicular networks

Vehicular networks are characterized by highly dynamic network topologies, frequent network fragmentations and the fact that movements of vehicles are constrained to pre-defined roadways. Researchers have devoted considerable efforts to the development of innovative protocols and mechanisms to address the demanding quality of service requirements of various vehicular applications, taking into account of these special characteristics. Even though field testing yields more realistic results, it potentially involves more hazards and can be prohibitively expensive when done at scale. Hence, simulation has been the tool of choice for evaluating the performance of vehicular networking protocols and mechanisms. For simulating a wireless communication scenario in a vehicular networking environment, both the mobility of vehicles and the wireless communications between them should be modeled using appropriate traffic and network simulators, respectively. A conversion tool needs to be used to convert the outputs of traffic simulators to trace-files readable by network simulators. Note that in this case the generation of the trace-files takes place before the network simulation begins. However, for some vehicular applications such as safety or traffic applications, the movements of vehicles are affected by the received packets. So, both traffic and network simulators are expected to be running simultaneously and exchanging data. In this paper, we survey a comprehensive set of both traffic and network simulators as well as possible conversion tools and integration alternatives. We believe that this paper helps the researchers new to the field select appropriate vehicular network platforms and provide them with helpful insights as they run their first vehicular simulations.