Vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) are an emerging technology in the field of intelligent transport systems. Developed from the more general mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs), VANETs differentiate themselves by having predictable movement, higher available processing power, and virtually infinite power and storage capabilities. Most non-safety related applications designed for use within VANETs require the exchange of medium amounts of non-critical data, which is facilitated using broadcast protocols to other road vehicles or roadside infrastructure. These applications require fast, efficient, and reliable transfer of data whilst also minimising the amount of broadcast requests sent over the network. This thesis aims to provide an understanding of existing research in the development of VANETs, and the benefits that a caching-based approach provides to vehicle-to-vehicle communication. The performance is analysed in terms of average request time, cache hit rate, cache request rate, and the existing data server request rate. Simulations take place within three different road scenarios: rural, urban and highway traffic. The simulations are implemented within the Veins framework using SUMO for mobility simulation and OMNeT++ for network simulation. The results show that caching significantly reduces content delivery time in all cases, reduces the number of requests by almost 50% within an urban environment, and reduces the number of requests by around 20% in rural and highway scenarios.
Rural - Lode/Bottisham/Swaffham Bulbeck
Urban - Cherry Hinton Road/Hills Road/Long Road, Cambridge
Highway - A14 junction 35 and surrounding area
