CAVENET: Description and analysis of a toolbox for vehicular networks simulation

Simulation of vehicular ad hoc networks is an important aspect of the analysis and design of intelligent routing and broadcasting protocols. In this regard, we propose a lightweight simulator, which separates the mobility model of the vehicles from the details of communication protocols. The mobility model is written in a high-level computing language, and the movement trace of nodes can be exported in a format compatible with standard network simulators. As a proof of concept, by means of extensive simulations, we review the properties of the generated mobility trace by measuring some parameters of interest, such as the average velocity. We show that, in general, the average velocity is a long-range dependent variable, and this fact poses some doubts on how to set the length of the simulation. Accordingly, we discuss the problem of transient data and stationarity, which is well understood only in the deterministic case.