Urban Mobility Models for VANETs

Mobility models, or the movement patterns of nodes communicating wirelessly, play a vital role in the simulation-based evaluation of Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs). Although recent research has developed models that better correspond to real world mobility, we still have a limited understanding of the level of the required level of mobility details for modeling and simulating VANETs. In this work, we examine a set of step-by-step enhancements to the level of details in mobility models for VANETs and evaluate the sensitivity of simulation results toward those modeling details. Through this process, we develop several new mobility models, that account for vehicular movement constraints such as traffic lights, multilane roads, and acceleration/deceleration. Using real and controlled synthetic maps, we compare our mobility models and two prior models. Our results demonstrate that the delivery ratio and packet delays in VANETs are more sensitive to the clustering effect of vehicles waiting at intersections and acceleration/deceleration of vehicles. We also found that the simulation of multiple lanes and synchronization at traffic signals have only a marginal impact on the ad hoc routing performance. Our work provides a sound starting point for further understanding and development of more realistic and accurate mobility models for VANET simulations.