Federating of MITSIMLab and ns-2 for realistic vehicular network simulation

In the near future, more vehicles are expected to be equipped with on-board devices that would permit wireless networking between vehicles on the road, and between vehicles and infrastructure, e.g. base stations, for the purpose of safety, entertainment, and other mobile applications such as mobile gaming and Internet access. For any accurate performance study of vehicular networks using computer simulation, it is important to consider real-life vehicular phenomena such as constrained movement due to road paths and traffic control at signalized street junctions. However, currently few simulators can offer a high degree of realism in modeling both vehicular movements and wireless communication for an accurate performance study of wireless vehicular networks. In this paper, we illustrate for the first time, the feasibility of using an open-source microscopic vehicle simulator MITSIMLab to generate high fidelity vehicle movement traces for a wide range of transport settings, processing the generated traces, and exporting them as mobility profiles of vehicular nodes under study to the popular ns-2 network simulator.