Lowering the barrier to wireless and mobile experimentation

Abstract

The success of ns highlights the importance of an infrastructure that enables efficient experimentation. Similarly, Netbed's automatic configuration and control of emulated and live network environments minimizes the effort spent configuring and running experiments. Learning from the evolution of these systems, in this paper we argue that a live wireless and mobile experimental facility focusing on ease of use and accessibility will not only greatly lower the barrier to research in these areas, but that the primary technical challenges can be overcome.The flexibility of Netbed's common abstractions for diverse node and link types has enabled its development from strictly an emulation platform to one that integrates simulation and live network experimentation. It can be further extended to incorporate wireless and mobile devices. To reduce the tedium of wireless and mobile experimentation, we propose automatically allocating and mapping a subset of a dense mesh of devices to match a specified network topology. To achieve low-overhead, coarse repeatability for mobile experiments, we outline how to leverage the predictability of passive couriers, such as PDA-equipped students and PC-equipped busses.

Design of a Configurable Wireless Network Testbed with Live Traffic

“…Some of the limitations facing wireless scientific research and some suggestions to overcome these are presented in [19]. The closest to our work in essence are PlanetLab in the wired world and TFA [20], the Netbed/Emulab [6] and Orbit [4, 21,17,22,5] in the wireless world.…”

Experience with a wireless network testbed based on signal propagation emulation

“…Examples include WHYNET [50], Emulab [49], Orbit [39], MiNT [10,9] and others [14,25]. The approaches are useful for certain types of experiments, but they do not address all challenges.…”

“…Examples include hybrid solutions [50]. analog channel emulation [16], and partially controllable wireless testbeds [49,44,9]. These approaches are useful for some types of experiments, but they have limitations such as limited physical layer control or repeatability, limited flexibility, or high complexity.…”

Design and Implementation of an RF Front End for Physical Layer Wireless Network Emulation

“…More recently, several efforts such as Emulab [7], Orbit [8], and MiNT [9], [10] have begun using controlled wireless testbeds. Like these systems, the emulator supports real devices running, and real applications.…”