Vehicular communications occur when two or more vehicles come into range of one another, to share data over wireless media. The applications of this communication
are far-reaching, from toll collection to collision avoidance. Due to the proliferation
of wireless devices and their ubiquitous nature it is now possible to operate in an ad
hoc manner between transmitting stations. Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) are a
special kind of network, that experience short link times and high levels of interference,
but have the ability to present many driver information and safety solutions for the
worlds roads.
Computer simulation of VANET enables rapid-prototyping and intensive exploration of
systems and protocol, using highly complex and computationally expensive models and
programs. Experimentation with real vehicles would be time consuming and expensive,
limiting the range of study that could be achieved and therefore reducing the accuracy
of analytical solutions exposed through experimentation. An extensive corpus of work
on networking, traffic modelling and parallel processing algorithm has been reviewed as
part of this thesis, to isolate the current state-of-the-art and examine areas for novel
research.
In this thesis the value and importance of computer simulation for VANET is proposed,
which explores the applications of a high-fidelity system when applied to real-world
scenarios. The work is grounded on two main contributions: 1) that by using intervehicle
communication and an advanced lane changing/merging algorithm the congestion
that builds up around an obstruction on a highway can be alleviated and reduced more
effectively than simple line-of-sight, even when only a proportion of the vehicles are
radio equipped. 2) that the available parameter space, as large as it is, can be efficiently
explored using a parallel algorithm with the NS-3 network simulation system. The large-scale
simulation of VANET in highway scenarios can be used to discover universal trends
and behaviours in the successful and timely delivery of data packets.
The application of VANET research has a broad scope for use in modern vehicles and the
optimisation of the transmission of data is highly relevant; a large number of parameters
can be tuned in a networking device, but knowing which to tune and by how much is
paramount to the operation of intelligent transport systems