Performance of wireless network simulators

Abstract

Designing protocols for wireless networks is a challenging task. Combined with the fact that such networks are often deployed for critical missions like forest fire detection in the WSN scenario or have to function properly and efficiently for an extended period of time, it is desirable to thoroughly test, analyze and evaluate newly developed communication protocols before deployment. In order to do this, simulations are a good compromise between cost/complexity and accuracy of the results. Since there are many simulators for wireless networks, it is often difficult to decide which one to choose. Therefore, we present a case study in which four common wireless network simulators were used to evaluate a well-known topology control protocol (SPAN). Within the case study, we describe the strengths and weaknesses of the examined network simulators: First, we evaluate the usability of the simulators in terms of different parts of the protocol developer's work process. Moreover, we also focus on the simulator's support for reusability and maintainability of simulation models by measuring particular model properties. For this purpose, we have proposed a model of quality for network simulators. The model of quality defines which properties of models to measure and how to interpret them. As opposed to other simulator comparisons, we do not focus on the correlation of the individual simulation results. Through this paper, we aim at providing a basis for finding an adequate simulator for a particular task.

Design and implementation of a new MANET simulator model for AODV simulation

“…Specifying the outstanding aspects of each simulator and making use of it in simulator selection was the aim and the foremost problems in MANET simulators were summarized [10]. With a simple topology control algorithm, Orfanus et al made a comparison of wireless network simulators [11]. In a comprehensive technical report prepared by Begg et al, it was indicated that discrete event simulation would be an important method in service availability and flexibility studies in next-generation network simulators [8].…”

Comarison and Analysis of Simulators for Ad hoc Wireless Networks

“…In most cases, a simulation trace file is created, and is used to plot graph and/or to create animation. NS2 consists of two key languages: C++ and Object-oriented Tool Command Language (OTcl) [7,8]. While the C++ defines the internal mechanism (i.e.…”

“…This simulation software itself should be modular, customizable and should allow embedding simulations into larger network applications. An OMNET++ model consists of modules that communicate with message passing [8]. The active modules are termed simple modules, they are written in C++, using the simulation class library.…”

“…It also gives the descriptions of a list of simulators (specified above) and provides the estimations of their popularities and give some hints on which simulators used for what needs. At the end a table is presented comparing the considered simulators according to their own languages, their modules and whether they have GUI support or not [7,8 ].…”

Scalability evaluation of two network simulation tools for Vehicular Ad hoc Networks

“…The paper compares the amount of effort needed for installation, familiarization, implementation (number of lines of code and number of lines for configuration needed to achieve a specific goal), and interpretation of the collected statistics. Reference [5] is a revised version of [4] made by the same authors, and reports a similar, but updated study with the same network simulators (J-Sim, OMNet++, ns-2, and ShoX). All these previous works are different from ours since the authors do not focus on VANET, and do not make any types of performance evaluation.…”