Simulation of TinyOS Wireless Sensor Networks Using OPNET

Many of the sensors finding their way into sensor networks run a lightweight operating system developed at U.C. Berkeley called TinyOS. This open-source operating system, designed specifically for highly-constrained wireless devices, enables building a variety of applications using highly modular code. Over one hundred groups worldwide, and several company products, use TinyOS. Our main contribution in this paper is a simulation interface for compiling TinyOS applications to OPNET model. Our approach harnesses the wealth of tools made available by OPNET, such as wireless channel modeling, scenario management, and collected data management. Using OPNET it is thus possible to simultaneously simulate multiple instantiations of different TinyOS applications, as well as the interaction of TinyOS sensors with other hardware devices (e.g., Ethernet and IP nodes). As part of our preliminary results, we have incorporated the timer, LED, and radio interfaces of TinyOS sensors into an OPNET model. Within our implementation, TinyOS radio packets are converted to OPNET packets and sent and received using the OPNET API (although currently all communications links are modeled as full-duplex serial links). We present two simulation results as proofs of our concept: an LED-based counter, and a location-detection system. These promising results demonstrate the viability of our approach to bridging the TinyOS world with the available infrastructure in the OPNET world.