Vehicular Networks Emulation

Many applications and protocols are planned for the so-called Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Most of them are supposed to work in dynamic networks, such as the vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET). However, designing and studying distributed applications and protocols in such networks is not easy. Analytical studies suffer from the lack of pertinent models. Simulations are often far from reality. Road experiments are generally limited, due to their complexity. In this paper, we present an environment that emulates the vehicular networks. It allows to reproduce road experiments without further developments of the studied prototypes. These protocols can be tested with more complex road traffic. The impact of the communication range and the dynamics of the network can be studied. Some comparisons with road tests and simulations show the advantage of such an emulation framework.