Impact of radio propagation models in vehicular ad hoc networks simulations

Abstract

Vehicular ad hoc networks use new protocols to enable security, services and other inventive applications to be run onboard many types of vehicles. In their design phase, those protocols and applications need to be extensively simulated but most of the work in the simulator field concentrates on the medium access and higher layer protocols. In this paper, through real world experimentations we first characterize the behavior of the channel regarding losses, we deduce a set of properties needed for lightweight models still producing relevant results. Then we implement them in a model we called shadowing-pattern which we finally use in a VANET distinctive scenario where it considerably modifies the results of a data propagation application.