An Integrated Wireless Intersection Simulator for collision warning systems in vehicular networks

In this paper, we present the architecture of an Integrated Wireless Intersection Simulator (IWIS) that is used to study the effect of different communication-based solutions on vehicle traffic and vehicle behavior in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). IWIS consists of two components, a Vehicle Intersection Traffic Simulator (VITS) that simulates vehicle traffic, and a Wireless Simulator (WS) that simulates wireless packet transmission. The user can provide a variety of traffic configurations such as buildings, traffic lights, and vehicle density through a friendly graphical user interface. The modular nature of our simulator gives the ability to compare different communication protocols easily. The output from WS (packet collision rate and transmission delay) is fed to a collision warning system in VITS. We evaluate IWIS under different traffic conditions and different MAC protocols.