Abstract

International audience; With recent technological advances made in the field of vehicular communications, a plethora of applications has emerged that aim to improve driver safety and traffic fluidity. The platooning application is expected to be a good first step to tame autonomous driving, especially traffic congestion problems in big cities. In this context, it is important to study a platoon of vehicles in its environment, sharing the road and wireless channel with other road users. For such a scenario, efficient simulation tools come in handy for studying vehicular communications in large scale environments. This paper presents a step toward improving iTETRIS simulation platform to simulate platoon communications in large-scale connected vehicles use case. To this end, a restricted communication zone, centered around the leading vehicle of the platoon, and in which vehicles can receive and send packets is introduced to limit the computational cost of communication simulation. The merits of the improved platform in term of time execution efficiency compared to iTETRIS are shown through extensive simulation using real mobility traces.

Abstract

Cooperative ITS systems are expected to improve road traffic safety and efficiency, and provide infotainment services on the move, through the dynamic exchange of messages between vehicles, and between vehicles and infrastructure nodes. The complexity of cooperative ITS systems and the interrelation between its components requires their extensive testing before deployment. The lack of simulation platforms capable to test, with high modelling accuracy, cooperative ITS systems and applications in large scale scenarios triggered the implementation of the EU-funded iTETRIS simulation platform. iTETRIS is a unique open source simulation platform characterized by a modular architecture that allows integrating two widely adopted traffic and wireless simulators, while supporting the implementation of cooperative ITS applications in a language-agnostic fashion. This paper presents in detail the iTETRIS simulation platform, and describes its architecture, standard compliant implementation, operation and new functionalities. Finally, the paper demonstrates iTETRIS large scale cooperative ITS evaluation capabilities through the implementation and evaluation of cooperative traffic congestion detection and bus lane management applications. The detailed description and implemented examples provide valuable information on how to use and exploit iTETRIS simulation potential.