Physical phenomena affecting VANETs: Open issues in network simulations

The analysis on Vehicular Ad-Hoc NETworks (VANETs) is often restricted to the protocol mechanisms, disregarding physical layer phenomena which, actually, should not be neglected. This paper focuses on those phenomena, in the wireless chain, which have recently been demonstrated to significantly influence results. Two main areas are covered: the modelling of packet reception and the identification of realistic and scalable propagation models. At the current state of the art, only the latters seem to represent a non-negligible open issue.