  Channel modeling is essential for design and performance evaluation of
numerous protocols in vehicular networks. In this work, we study and provide
results for largescale and small-scale modeling of communication channel in
dense vehicular networks. We first propose an approach to remove the effect of
fading on deterministic part of the large-scale model and verify its accuracy
using a single transmitter-receiver scenario. Two-ray model is then utilized
for path-loss characterization and its parameters are derived from the
empirical data based on a newly proposed method. Afterward, we use
{\alpha}-{\mu} distribution to model the fading behavior of vehicular networks
for the first time, and validate its precision by Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S)
goodness-of-fit test. To this end, the significantly better performance of
utilizing {\alpha}-{\mu} distribution over the most adopted fading distribution
in the vehicular channels literature, i.e. Nakagami-m, in terms of passing K-S
test has been investigated and statistically verified in this paper. A large
received signal strength indicator (RSSI) dataset from a measurement campaign
is used to evaluate our claims. Moreover, the whole model is implemented in a
reliable discrete event network simulator which is widely used in the academic
and industrial research for network analysis, i.e. network simulator-3 (ns-3),
to show the outcome of the proposed model in the presence of upper layer
network protocols.
