Generic Geo-Social Mobility Model for VANET

Simulation is a key feature in validating the protocols dedicated for VANET applications. Since the vehicles mobility is driven by the human mobility characteristics and is controlled by the geographical restrictions of the roads, the work presented in this paper is aimed to having a realistic mobility model that incorporates both the social aspects of human mobility together with the geographical restrictions that governs the movement of the mobile nodes. This mobility model is dedicated for testing the protocols related to the delay tolerant applications where unicasting/multicasting is used for data dissemination rather than broadcasting. Thus location awareness and destination prediction is essential. The model is based on using realistic data sets rather than randomly generated data. Evaluating the technique using the SUMO simulator have proven a range of 80% to 90% of match between the predicted traces and real life data available for evaluation.