A Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure for the Optimization of VANET Simulations

Cloud computing is becoming increasingly popular for the provisioning of computing resources, in particular, through scientific tools that perform modeling or simulations. Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs) are mobile ad hoc networks which are meant to support primarily safety warnings and to manage challenging conditions to improve our transportation experience. This is a challenging context where large amounts of data need to be elaborated and analyzed in order to fully understand protocol and phenomena behaviors. In fact, VANET simulations are typically computationally intensive problems, and lend themselves for execution on distributed systems. A new hybrid cloud infrastructure is here presented to help and support the simulation science. This architecture optimizes the scheduling and execution of a batch of simulations, increasing the overall performance, in terms of simulation time and costs. Results clearly highlight the potentiality of this technology, proving as a valuable tool for network simulations.