Analysis of Inter-vehicle Communication Using Network Simulator

Inter-Vehicle Communication (IVC) could be an important component of next-generation Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). It provides wireless connectivity among traveling vehicles to exchange real-time road condition and traffic information to support safe driving and traffic management. IVC system can be considered as a special form of mobile ad-hoc network (MANET). The MANET and IVC are both hot issues for researches. However, there are few domestic literature combining the two topics. Most of them are discussed separately. Thus, the studies on architecture and protocols of mobile ad-hoc network have great value for establishing vehicular networks. Two simple IVC scenarios are implemented on NS-2. The quantitative metrics like network throughput, delay and packet-loss are used to assess the performance of MANET for IVC under different vehicular speeds, transport layer protocols and routing protocols. The results indicate that MANET can be used for IVC well. The different speeds and protocols should be chosen based on specific IVC scenarios.