An SDN-Based Vehicular Networking Platform for Mobility-Aware QoS and Handover Evaluation

Abstract

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) are a key enabler of intelligent transportation systems, supporting safety-critical and latency-sensitive applications through vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. However, high node mobility, rapidly changing network topologies, and heterogeneous wireless conditions pose significant challenges to traditional distributed networking approaches, particularly in terms of quality of service (QoS) stability and handover performance. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) offers promising solutions by enabling centralized control, programmability, and flexible deployment of network functions. This paper presents an SDN-enabled vehicular networking platform designed for realistic, system-level experimentation under dynamic mobility conditions. The proposed platform tightly couples microscopic vehicular mobility generated by SUMO with wireless network emulation in Mininet-WiFi, enabling real-time interaction between vehicle movement, wireless connectivity, and SDN control decisions, where a custom SDN controller implements mobility-aware traffic management and handover handling across roadside units. Extensive experimental scenarios evaluate throughput, packet loss, jitter, and end-to-end latency under varying traffic loads and mobility patterns. Results indicate that SDN-based centralized control improves QoS consistency relative to the unmanaged baseline configuration considered in this study. The proposed platform provides practical insights and a reproducible experimental framework for the design and evaluation of software-defined vehicular networking systems.