Extensive Experimental Characterization of Communications in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks within Different Environments

Test-bed based research is an important aspect in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and especially in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). However because of the high associated cost, we do not see as many high quality experiment studies as simulation or analysis ones. In this paper, we present extensive experimental measurements of vehicle-to-vehicle communication on several typical scenarios in order to study the critical factors that affect multimedia applications over an IEEE 802.11 VANET. Unlike [4], we proof that in addition to short message transfer, the deployment of multimedia applications is also feasible. We found that network performances are clearly different according to the environment (city, highway, etc.), the distance between vehicles and the vehicles speed.