Artery-C -- An OMNeT++ Based Discrete Event Simulation Framework for Cellular V2X

Cellular Vehicle-to-X (Cellular V2X) is a communication technology that aims to facilitate the communication among vehicles and with the roadside infrastructure. Introduced with LTE Release 14, Cellular V2X enables device-to-device communication to support road safety and traffic efficiency applications. We present Artery-C, a simulation framework for the performance evaluation of Cellular V2X protocols and V2X applications. Our simulator relies on the simulation framework SimuLTE and substantially extends it by implementing control and user planes. Besides the vehicle-to-network communication via the up-/downlink interface, it provides vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-infrastructure communication via the sidelink interface using the managed and the unmanaged mode of Cellular V2X (mode 3 and 4, respectively). The simulator also implements advanced features of 5G mobile networks, such as variable numerologies. For the transmission of of V2X messages, it adds a non-IP interface. Artery-C integrates seamlessly into the simulation framework Artery, which enables the simulation of standardized V2X messages at the facilities layer as well as the coupling to the mobility simulator SUMO. A specific feature of Artery-C is the support of dynamic switching between all modes of Cellular V2X. In order to demonstrate the capabilities of Artery-C, we evaluate V2X-based platooning as a representative use case and present results for mode 3, mode 4 and mode switching in a highway scenario.