A study of safety applications in vehicular networks

Car crashes claim the lives of more than 100,000 people every year in the US alone. Forming ad-hoc networks among vehicles traveling on a highway can be very helpful to avoid such deadly accidents and pile-ups. In this paper, we define two classes of applications for such networks: safety-related applications and Internet connectivity. We also propose a new model for highway traffic and events that can be used to automatically generate movement files readable by the NS-2.28 simulator. Through simulations of such vehicular networks using flooding and IEEE 802.11 for safety-related applications, we attempt to answer the fundamental question: are highway vehicular networks feasible and efficient for safety purposes