On the use of virtual mobile nodes with real-world considerations in vehicular ad hoc networks

The high mobility and variability of road traffic has hampered the design of efficient communication protocols and the deployment of new services in vehicular networks. Nevertheless, the newly-introduced notion of virtual mobile nodes (VMNs) has the potential to turn wireless ad hoc networks into more predictable environments, facing the significant challenges raised by the mobility of the (real) nodes. Several studies on the applicability and benefits of using VMNs in the realm of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have been reported in the literature. However, they always consider simple scenarios of static (i.e. non-mobile) virtual nodes arranged in grids over a given area. In this paper, we present experiments with virtual nodes in the more specific realm of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), which allow us to explore alternative arrangements and new strategies of mobility for VMNs. We present the architecture of a simulation environment developed to assess these ideas, and discuss the settings and the results of preliminary experiments.