A discrete-event simulation tool for resource constrained networks

Abstract

Resource Constrained Networks (RCN) have become a hot topic in recent years, they includes Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANET) and Delay-Tolerant Networks (DTN). Security is one of the major concerns in these class of networks. Researchers are constantly devising new protocols and algorithms to secure different types of RCNs. There are a variety of different network simulation tools available. Each tool has its strengths and weaknesses. Some examples include NS3 and OMEet++. Both are quite robust, but they are complex and time consuming to learn. In order to test how a routing or security protocol works in an RCN, it requires significant user overhead in NS3. A researcher typically needs to do a lot of modifications to set up a properly functioning RCN test case. This is due to the robustness of the tool and the fact that each implements almost all network properties (ip, buffer, etc). While this is important it also is a reason why they run relatively slow. In this M.S. Thesis, we propose a network simulation tool that abstracts much of the networking details to allow for faster testing of proposed routing and security protocols. It implements a random way-point mobility model and is based on the principle of discrete-event simulation. Simplicity, speed and ease of implementation are the main goals of this tool. The time complexity is around O(kn^2) where k is the number of iterations and n is the number of nodes in the network. We compared our output with those presented by Babbitt and Szymanski, both are implemented with the same trust management scheme; the former in the simulator proposed here and the latter in NS3. This tool gets similar simulation outcomes and running time by two orders of magnitude better than the NS3 based simulation of the same system.