Large-Scale Simulation of Site-Specific Propagation Model: Defining Reference Scenarios and Performance Evaluation

The vehicular network research community continue to strive for improvements in the accuracy and validity of simulation-based studies. While there have been several new enhancements, most of the network simulators lack comprehensive support to represent real wireless channel characteristics, especially at the physical (PHY) layer. The test-bed has been a widely-accepted alternative which is capable of bringing realism to the performance evaluation. However, higher implementation cost and scalability issues prevent test-bed from being a viable solution for large-scale performance evaluation studies. Therefore, realistic simulation frameworks are highly sought-after to reduce the implementation cost and complexity for city-wide testing of novel networking protocols and algorithms. In this paper, a set of common reference scenarios are introduced in the city of Fujairah, UAE. These reference scenarios exhibit different wireless channel characteristics specific to the requirements in vehicular communication. Next, a generic simulation framework is described that combines a suite of simulation tools. The framework utilizes a site-specific, geometry-based vehicular propagation approach which models different characteristics of a wireless link more accurately. Finally, through extensive simulation, each reference scenario is evaluated in terms of received signal strength, packet delivery ratio, and reliable communication range.