PhyCoNet-Sim: A Framework for Physically Accurate Simulations of Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

—For decades, the simulation has been a well-established methodology to study the behavior of wireless telecommunication networks. While network and link layer protocols are simulated by using very detailed models, there is typically still a lack of explicit and deterministic considerations of the physical layer. Phyical layer, antenna and radio channel are regularly approxi-mated with simplistic models based on statistic distribution of bit error rate values. While this approach might deliver a sufficient accuracy to compare the performance of routing protocols or other higher-level applications, it disallows, however, studying cross-layer concepts, multi-user communication or the explicit consideration of deterministic channel models. It also denies the physical layer to be an explicit degree of freedom in the design space. To overcome this problem, we set up a PhyCoNet-Sim, a co-simulation framework which links OMNeT++ to a physical layer simulator based on GNU Radio or Matlab/Simulink.