Design and Implementation of A more Realistic Radio Propagation Model for Wireless Vehicular Networks over the NCTUns Network Simulator

Abstract

Today, Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) applications has made a great impact on improving the quality and efficiency of the transportation system. This achievement has attracted researchers to propose more ITS applications, particularly to improve the transportation safety through Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs). The major difficulty faced by these researchers is the verification of their proposals or ideas through field-trials or real-world experiments. Therefore, VANET simulator becomes the best and the most economical alternative to verify the validity and reliability of a proposed ITS application. Among all the VANET simulators, the NCTUns 6.0 appears as one of the most powerful tool due to its integrated platform of network simulation and microscopic traffic simulation. To further enhance the capability of NCTUns 6.0, we design and implement a more realistic radio propagation model, specifically for VANETs simulation. Through extensive simulations, it is shown that the adoption of a more realistic channel model has greatly affected the vehicles' behavior, as compared to the commonly used two-ray ground channel model.