Analysis of urban traffic data sets for VANETs simulations

TL;DR

This paper analyzes real urban traffic data to improve VANET simulations, deriving mobility patterns from empirical data and evaluating broadcast protocols in realistic traffic scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a method to incorporate real traffic data into VANET simulations and compares different broadcast protocols using these realistic mobility patterns.

Findings

Real traffic data enhances VANET simulation accuracy.

Different broadcast protocols perform variably in real traffic scenarios.

Empirical mobility patterns improve the realism of VANET models.

Abstract

Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANET) are self-organized, distributed communication networks built up from moving vehicles where each node is characterized by variable speed, strict limits of freedom in movement patterns and a variety of traffic dynamics. In the last few years vehicular traffic is attracting a growing attention from both industry and research, due to the importance of the related applications, ranging from traffic control to road safety. However, less attention has been paid to the modeling of realistic user mobility through real empirical data that would allow to develop much more effective communication and networking schemes. The aim of this study is then twofold: on one hand we derived real mobility patters to be used in a VANET simulator and on the other hand we simulated the VANET data dissemination achieved with different broadcast protocols in our real traffic setting.