A Review of Techniques for the Analysis of Simulation Output

Ad hoc networks present special issues that need to be investigate with more attention in comparison with standard data networks. We introduce a new methodology to carry out the study of communication protocols for ad hoc networks, in which measures provided by simulative tools are further elaborated through the Discrete Fourier Transform. The evaluation of results in the frequency domain allows to point out occasional misbehaviors in the network and the occurrence of events which take place only under particular conditions. In fact information on such events generally are lost whenever simulation measures are averaged. By using our methodology information on occasional events are gathered and evaluated according to the frequency of their occurrences.

2003

This report has been directly derived from Deliverable D11 "Demonstrator for mobile ad hoc networks" of the EU-funded RTD project BISON (IST-2001-38923) IDSIA is a joint institute of both University of Lugano (USI) and University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI), and was founded in 1988 by the "Dalle Molle" Foundation which promoted quality of life.

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.

Handbook on Theoretical and Algorithmic Aspects of Sensor, Ad Hoc Wireless, and Peer-to-Peer Networks, 2005

International Journal of Applied Information Systems, 2013

The nature of wireless ad hoc network is such that communication between the nodes is extremely volatile, resultantly the quality of the wireless links is heavily unstable. Implementation of algorithms with enormous processing power and memory capacity for small and restricted resource-constrained wireless nodes is an inspiring task. Performance and behaviour estimation and comparison of wireless ad hoc network protocols, simulations are upright solution between cost and complexity, on the one side, and accuracy of the results, on the other side. Such simulation tools should allow researchers to verify new ideas and compare the proposed solutions in a virtual environment helping to avoid unnecessary, time-consuming or expensive hardware implementations. Difficulty arises in selection of wireless ad hoc network simulator for specific objective, features and usability due to the prensence of lots of simulators. Reusability, availability, performance, scalability, support for rich-semantics, scripting languages and graphical support are the main requirments for best framework of the wireless ad hoc network simulator. Within the study, we have described desirable and valuable missing features of the simulators, demarcation of their strength and weaknesses. Lot of effort is required for installation, habituation, implementation and visualization of wireless ad hoc network simulator. A lot of researchers and Scholars can seek help from this paper to identify the suitability of simulator for their study.

2009 Third Asia …, 2009

Performance Evaluation of Computer and …, 2010

Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks are a very interesting self-organizing communication system that can make the traffic on our roads much safer. A lot of aspects of the behavior of these systems are studied using network simulation frameworks. While the upper communication layers of Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks are mainly simulated according to their specifications, in this paper we will highlight weak points in these simulations. They occur due the fact that the layers below the link layer are considered very rarely and are also almost neglected by the commonly used network simulation frameworks. This can potentially lead to inaccurate simulation results which can be fatal when studying safety relevant applications or application with real-time constraints. In this work in progress paper we are going to propose an approach to get this under control.

2006

We introduce a scalable algorithm for time-parallel simulations of wireless ad hoc networks and report on our results. Our approach decomposes the simulation into overlapping temporal components; the individual components are computed using an unmodified sequential network simulator such as NS-2. Our algorithm is iterative and the accuracy of the results increases with the number of iterations. We find that the approach allows the simulation of ad hoc networks with a number of nodes larger than those feasible with sequential network simulators on single CPUs. The algorithm is scalable, we can simulate larger time intervals by increasing the number of virtual processors carrying out the simulation. We identify the parameters that can be investigated with the algorithm and report on the accuracy of our results and on the achieved simulation speedup.

We propose a novel, robust MANET protocols evaluation framework which enables researchers to track performance metrics and evaluate theoretical predictions. This framework speeds up the research and development spirals, provides faster feedback to algorithm developers and closes the loop between theory and qualitative analysis of the protocols' performance. Our test and evaluation effort is divided into two parts. Rapid prototyping and evaluation of proposed algorithms is performed in the MATLAB environment. These tools enable us to numerically analyze performance, capabilities, convergence, and robustness of new algorithms. The second higher fidelity approach is the test and evaluation framework developed in OPNET simulation environment. Its unique features are the novel application and evaluation process including sophisticated statistics collection and an event logging architecture.

2002

The deployment of wireless applications or protocols in the context of Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks (MANETs), often requires to step through a simulation phase. For the results of the simulation to be meaningful, it is important that the model on which is based the simulator matches as closely as possible the reality. In this paper we present the simulation results of a straightforward algorithm using several popular simulators (OPNET Modeler, NS-2, GloMoSim). The results tend to show that significant divergences exist between the simulators. This can be explained partly by the mismatching of the modelization of each simulator and also by the different levels of detail provided to implement and configure the simulated scenarios.