Simulation tools for vehicular ad hoc networks: A comparison study and future perspectives

Experimenting and testing vehicular network requires intensive labor and high expenses. Hence, an alternative solution is to use the simulation before actual implementation. Many studies have shown that mobility models, driver behavior and modeling of wireless channel have considerable effect on the performance results. Therefore, realistic mobility models and network simulators for vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) are critical tools for research in order to accurately achieve desired results that reflect the realistic behavior of vehicular traffic. Due to the aforementioned reasons, we motivated to conduct a survey on VANET simulators. Thus, this paper explores main trends in simulation tools, discusses the weaknesses of current VANET simulators and provides recommendations to researchers to select which VANET simulators to be used.