Experimental evaluation of an open source implementation of IPv6 GeoNetworking in VANETs

ISO TC204 and ETSI TC ITS are developing a set of standards for Cooperative ITS (Cooperative Intelligent transportation Systems) which will allow ITS stations i.e. vehicles, the road infrastructure and other peers reachable through the Internet to cooperate and exchange information with one another in order to enhance road safety, traffic efficiency and comfort for all road users. In situations where the exchange of information has to transit through the Internet, the use of IP, more specifically IPv6, is crucial and meets ITS needs for reliable and scalable communication capabilities in vehicular networks. An implementation of Cooperative ITS communication protocols is necessary to validate extensively the ETSI and ISO Cooperative ITS standards. In this paper, we describe CarGeo6, an ongoing open-source implementation of the IPv6 GeoNetworking capabilities of the ITS station reference architecture based on the output of the GeoNet European Project. CarGeo6 combines IPv6 and GeoNetworking capabilities into a common protocol stack for the transmission of IPv6 packets into a given geographical area. This paper reports the validation process and the network performance evaluation of CarGeo6 as well as a comparison of these results with GeoNet results.