A framework based on the concept of service-oriented architectures (SOA) to support the assessment of vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANET) is herein presented. Concepts related to SOA, as well as technologies that allow real-time data acquisition and dissemination within urban environments, and simulation tools to aid the simulation of VANET were preliminarily studied. A two-layered architecture was specified on the basis of the requirements for our simulation framework resulting in the

more »

... on of a multi-agent system formed of vehicle entities that are able to communicate and interact with each other and with their surrounding environment as well. A prototypical application was implemented, which was used to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach presented through experimental results.