On the level of detail of synthetic highway traffic necessary to vehicular networking studies

Proceeding of: 2015 IEEE Vehicular Networking Conference (VNC), Kyoto, Japan, 16-18 December, 2015The proper modeling of road traffic is paramount to the dependability of studies on vehicular networking solutions intended for highway environments. Yet, it is not clear which is the actual level of detail in the mobility representation that is sufficient and necessary to such studies. This uncertainty results into a variety of approaches being adopted in the literature, and ultimately undermines the reliability and reproducibility of research outcomes. We explore the space of possible mobility models and performance metrics, and pinpoint the level of detail needed for different types of vehicular networking studies.The research leading to these results was carried out while Marco Gramaglia was at CNR-IEIIT, and has received funding from the People Programme (Marie Curie Actions) of the European Unions Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under REA grant agreement n.630211 ReFleX.Publicad