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 all combinations, the AODV protocol paired with the CFM mobility model yielded the most optimal results: 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 is the first comprehensive evaluation of five major routing protocols across fourteen realistic vehicular mobility models under a unified simulation framework. The findings provide practical guidance for selecting suitable protocol–mobility model combinations tailored to diverse traffic conditions in real-world VANET deployments.