Networking Simulation for Intelligent Transportation Systems

1Simulation of Convergent Networks for Intelligent Transport Systems with VSimRTI

1.1. Introduction

For the realization of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), ad hoc networks based on IEEE 802.11p have a long history in research. This technology envisions a decentralized information exchange between mobile vehicles, and also with stationary roadside stations to enable communication with central stations in the public data network (i.e. the Internet). This approach offers several advantages such as the direct exploitation of the broadcast characteristics of the radio channel, which is useful for short message broadcasting in the vehicle’s vicinity. However, scalability is a big challenge in this approach, due to a limited communication range and a lack of deterministic quality of service (QoS). With the new generations of cellular networks (mobile phone networks), these drawbacks of vehicular ad hoc networks could be overcome. Cellular networks, e.g. 5G, are emerging as a capable solution not only for mobile Internet services, but also for ITS-specific traffic safety and efficiency matters. Cellular networks exhibit the major advantage of a nearly unlimited communication range, due to their architecture, with only a short wireless part between the mobile device and the base station, and the wired part through the backbone. However, this architecture introduces a particular delay overhead, which makes meeting the strong requirements of many safety applications questionable. ...