SimuCRV: A Simulation Framework for Cognitive Radio Enabled Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Traditionally, enhancing the safety of commuters and relieving traffic congestion have been the primary objectives of Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs). Recently, much progress has been made in the field of vehicular communication, enabling futuristic applications that might make journeys more enjoyable to passengers, such as exchanging multimedia among passengers in nearby vehicles. However, these applications may require more throughput than conventional safety applications. Cognitive Radio (CR) technology is a potential solution to satisfy the throughput demands of VANETs. Typically, in communication networks as large as vehicular networks simulation is the preferred approach to performance evaluation of new protocol concepts. Although, simulation frameworks for VANETs are openly available, simulators capable of assessing end-to-end real-life applications of CR enabled VANETs are never made available to the research community. In this paper, we present a simulation framework for CR-VANETs called SimuCRV, based on the well-known discrete event simulator OMNeT++. The framework extends the vehicular network simulation framework called Veins and facilitates advertising of cognitive radio based services according to the IEEE Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE) standard. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework through a simulation scenario where we compare the throughput of a road side unit (RSU) having a single transceiver with a dual radio based RSU that distributes its application data on a CR channel.