Virtualising Testbeds to Support Large-Scale Reconfigurable Experimental Facilities

Abstract

Abstract. Experimentally driven research for wireless sensor networks is invaluable to provide benchmarking and comparison of new ideas. An increasingly common tool in support of this is a testbed composed of real hardware devices which increases the realism of evaluation. However, due to hardware costs the size and heterogeneity of these testbeds is usually limited. In addition, a testbed typically has a relatively static configuration in terms of its network topology and its software support infrastructure, which limits the utility of that testbed to specific casestudies. We propose a novel approach that can be used to (i) interconnect a large number of small testbeds to provide a federated testbed of very large size, (ii) support the interconnection of heterogeneous hardware into a single testbed, and (iii) virtualise the physical testbed topology and thus minimise the need to relocate devices. We present the most important design issues of our approach and evaluate its performance. Our results indicate that testbed virtualisation can be achieved with high efficiency and without hindering the realism of experiments.

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“…Before delving into testbed platforms as made available in the literature, the next section built upon (Baumgartner et al 2010), introduces the concept of virtual links and federated testbeds in light of its importance for testbeds design and implementation.…”

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