Simulation of points of interest distribution in vehicular networks

Over the last few years Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) have become a major research topic. Security mechanisms such as Public Key Infrastructure have been customized to provide privacy, authentication, integrity and non-repudiation to vehicle communications. Once the security foundations were established, different applications were built on top: intelligent driving systems, parking spot finders, peer-to-peer content, advertisements distribution, etc. In order to verify the feasibility of those applications in the VANET environment, simulation tools such as ns-2 or Glomosim are used, basing their mobility model on non-uniform distributions. The major difficulty for those simulations resides in the complexity of correctly characterizing vehicular mobility at both macroscopic and microscopic levels. This article leaves the generation of mobility traces to simulators such as Multi-Agent Traffic Simulator or VanetMobiSim and focuses on the implementation of the network application simulator poiSim. poiSim simulates Chains of Trust, a secure points of interest distribution protocol for vehicular networks. This article discusses how, by using customized application simulators, we can obtain more realistic results than by using general network simulators such as ns-2. poiSim processes a 24-hour mobility trace produced by a Multi-Agent Traffic Simulator with over 260,000 nodes, which realistically simulates public and private traffic over regional maps of Switzerland. The result is a Chains of Trust simulation, which accurately portrays reality and can be executed in a personal computer. Finally, it should be noted that poiSim could easily be modified to simulate other protocols in vehicular networks.Peer Reviewe