An obstacle model implementation for evaluating radio shadowing with ns-3

Abstract

Obstacles, such as buildings and trees, interfere with radio wave signal propagation by contributing fading and shadowing effects. To produce results that accurately reflect real-world topologies, models must address the radio-interfering conditions that obstacles present. Failing to account for the effects of obstacles can therefore inaccurately overstate network performance. An obstacle shadowing model was implemented for the ns-3 network simulation toolset and tested using an ns-3 script for wireless vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) scenarios and obstacle data from Open Street Map (OSM). Results show that deterministic obstacle shadowing compares differently than stochastic Nakagami-m fading. The obstacle shadowing model algorithm can be executed in time complexity similar to other simpler models. Including realistic obstacle shadowing in simulation modeling improves performance assessment.