Networking Simulation for Intelligent Transportation Systems

3Trace Extraction for Mobility in Civil Aeronautical Communication Networks Simulation

The mobility pattern of nodes in a wireless network has a strong impact on the communication technologies that can be deployed. It is therefore logical that accurately simulating this mobility is the first step toward simulating the whole communication system. In the case of a civil aircraft, the mobility in a given airspace is constrained by air authority regulations in addition to aircraft capacities. Furthermore, general air traffic is shaped both by regulations and economic considerations. These, plus the physical characteristics of aircraft (e.g. speed, altitude), create a specific mobility pattern for each airspace considered.

In network simulation, the mobility of nodes can be seen in one of two ways. It can first be considered as an input to the network model, with stochastic models or pre-recorded traces. It can also be seen as a process that both impacts the communications and is impacted by them. In this last case, the mobility must be implemented by simulating the behavior of autonomous network aware agents that must communicate in order to perform a common goal (e.g. reaching their destinations while respecting safety measures). As far as aircraft communication simulations are concerned, researchers tend to use the former point of view owing to the fact that current regulations on air traffic do not offer much choice of trajectory to the individual aircraft.

In the domain of aeronautical ...