Modeling and simulation of VANET routing protocols under realistic mobility patterns

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs), a subclass of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), rely on efficient routing protocols to maintain reliable communication in highly dynamic and decentralized environments. While numerous routing strategies have been proposed, their performance varies significantly with the choice of underlying mobility models that simulate real vehicular movement. This study presents a two-phase evaluation of five widely used routing protocols—Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV), Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector (DSDV), Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR), and Geographic Routing Protocol (GRP)—across fourteen realistic mobility models, including the Intelligent Driver Model (IDM), Car-Following Model (CFM), and Lighthill–Whitham–Richards (LWR) model. Simulations are executed using Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO), Network Simulator 3 (NS-3), and the Veins framework. The performance is assessed using eight key metrics: Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), End-to-End Delay (E2ED), Throughput, Jitter, Energy Consumption, Packet Loss Ratio (PLR), Normalized Routing Load (NRL), and Link Breakage Rate (LBR). Among the evaluated protocol–mobility combinations, AODV paired with the CFM model demonstrated comparatively favorable performance under the considered simulation configuration: 93% PDR, 79.4 ms E2ED, 332 kbps throughput, 3.4 ms jitter, 3.48 J energy consumption, 7% PLR, 0.3 NRL, and 5 link breakages per simulation. This study provides a systematic and unified comparative evaluation of five widely used routing protocols across fourteen simulation-based vehicular mobility models. The findings provide scenario-specific comparative insights for simulation-based VANET performance evaluation and offer practical, simulation-based guidance for selecting suitable protocol–mobility model combinations under the evaluated experimental conditions.