Modeling and Simulation of WAVE 1609.4-based Multi-channel Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Recently, the IEEE 1609.4 Standard for Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE) has been proposed to enhance the performance of vehicular networks with multi-channel operations that allow for the coexistence of safety-related and non-safety related vehicular applications. However, while the benefits of the multi-channel approach are clear, the impact of the IEEE 1609.4 channel scheduler on the performance of delay-constrained vehicular applications remains to be well explored by researchers. At present, the evaluation of 1609.4-based Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) constitutes an open issue due to the lack of simulation tools that can provide a complete modeling of the IEEE WAVE 802.11p/1609.4 stack. In this paper, we provide three key contributions pertaining to multi-channel VANETs. First, we describe our implementation of the IEEE 1609.4 protocol in the ns2 simulator, and we detail its current integration with the existing ns2 implementation of the 802.11p MAC protocol. Second, using our simulation model we propose an evaluation study of 1609.4-based VANETs, and we show that the tight channel synchronization issues foreseen by the protocol might have a dramatic impact on the performance of safety-related applications with strict delivery ratio and delay requirements. Third, we propose two new enhancements for the WAVE protocol stack to favor the dissemination of safety messages in multi-channel VANETs. The suggested algorithms are shown to greatly improve packet delivery ratio and delay of safety applications in single and multi-hop topologies, while preserving the synchronization scheme of the IEEE 1609.4 protocol.