On the Experimental Evaluation of Vehicular Networks: Issues, Requirements and Methodology Applied to a Real Use Case

TL;DR

This paper reviews key issues in vehicular network testing, introduces the AnaVANET evaluation environment, and demonstrates its application through a case study involving IPv6 and vehicle-to-vehicle routing protocols.

Contribution

It presents AnaVANET, a comprehensive tool for vehicular network testing, and proposes a generic methodology validated with a real-world case study.

Findings

AnaVANET effectively supports data gathering and analysis for vehicular network experiments.

The case study demonstrates successful testing of IPv6 over vehicle-to-vehicle routing.

The methodology provides a structured approach for experimental evaluation in vehicular communications.

Abstract

One of the most challenging fields in vehicular communications has been the experimental assessment of protocols and novel technologies. Researchers usually tend to simulate vehicular scenarios and/or partially validate new contributions in the area by using constrained testbeds and carrying out minor tests. In this line, the present work reviews the issues that pioneers in the area of vehicular communications and, in general, in telematics, have to deal with if they want to perform a good evaluation campaign by real testing. The key needs for a good experimental evaluation is the use of proper software tools for gathering testing data, post-processing and generating relevant figures of merit and, finally, properly showing the most important results. For this reason, a key contribution of this paper is the presentation of an evaluation environment called AnaVANET, which covers the previous needs. By using this tool and presenting a reference case of study, a generic testing methodology is described and applied. This way, the usage of the IPv6 protocol over a vehicle-to-vehicle routing protocol, and supporting IETF-based network mobility, is tested at the same time the main features of the AnaVANET system are presented. This work contributes in laying the foundations for a proper experimental evaluation of vehicular networks and will be useful for many researchers in the area.