Simulating LTE-Enabled Vehicular Communications

In the next years, cellular networks are expected to foster the development of inter-vehicle communication supporting advanced driver-assistance systems and self-driving cars. The evaluation of such systems can be performed via OMNeT++, which supports two independent frameworks for simulating Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communications and Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology, i.e., Artery and SimuLTE. The aim of this chapter is to combine Artery and SimuLTE in order to simulate V2X services relying on cellular communications. First, we describe the main challenges that are encountered when integrating the two frameworks. Then, considering the use case of vehicles that need to be warned when approaching a black ice region, we provide two tutorials that describe the configuration of networks and parameters, the implementation of the V2X service, and the collection of simulations results. The first tutorial focuses on vehicles exploiting the cellular infrastructure to communicate with a remote server, to be informed about the danger zone. In the second tutorial, vehicles detecting a traction loss exploit LTE’s Device-to-Device (D2D) capabilities to rapidly distribute the alert to all the vehicles in proximity.