Micro-model for Vehicle’s Behavior in OPNET Simulation

Abstract

A Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) is a system with wireless communication devices between vehicles and fixed stations on roads forming an information network. The VANET assists cars to share information about speed, traffic jams, accidents ahead, or warnings about danger. Similar to other networks, VANET simulation is required to validate the capabilities of protocols and applications. Many tools allow VANET simulation, however, this software is vehicle movement models combined with a network simulator. In some cases, the vehicle movement model is a pattern of consecutive random point motion and has more limitations than the actual vehicle movement. To improve simulation realism, a car-following model should be added to calculate the vehicle’s speed, acceleration, and position based on neighboring cars in the same or adjacent lanes. Therefore, we propose two types of simulations used in OPNET using car’s location trace files, and using car-following model. Together with the power of network simulation in OPNET, the scalability and efficiency of a protocol for VANET are evaluated. Thereby shows the simulation efficiency with the actual mobile model and the scalability assessment.