VANET topology characteristics under realistic mobility and channel models

Developing real-time safety and non-safety applications for vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) requires understanding the dynamics of the network topology characteristics since these dynamics determine both the performance of routing protocols and the feasibility of an application over VANET. Using various key metrics of interest including node degree, number of clusters, link duration and link quality, we provide a realistic analysis of the VANET topology characteristics. In this analysis, we integrate real-world road topology and real-time data extracted from Freeway Performance Measurement System database into the microscopic mobility model in order to generate realistic traffic flows along the highway. Moreover, we use more realistic, recently proposed, obstacle-based channel model and compare the performance of this sophisticated model to the most commonly used more simplistic channel models including unit disc and log-normal shadowing model. Our investigation on the key system metrics reveal that largely used unit disc model fails to realistically model communication channel, while parameters of simplistic models like log normal can be adjusted to match the corresponding system metrics of more complex and hard to implement obstacle based model.