APE - a Large Scale Ad Hoc Network Testbed for Reproducible Performance Tests

Wireless networks with autonomous mobile nodes, called ad hoc networks, have become increasingly interesting with the growth of wireless communication technologies. Several proposals for protocols to handle routing in such environments are under consideration by the Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANET) Working Group of the IETF. Simulations have been the driving force in development and evaluation of ad hoc routing protocols, but real world testing is currently lacking. The goal of this master’s thesis has been to develop a testbed such that large scale, real world tests of 50 or more nodes can be conducted. The testbed makes use of choreographed node movements through instructions to the user in order to reproduce testruns as accurately as possible. A new mobility metric called virtual mobility based on signal strength is introduced and enables post testrun analysis and characterization of network mobility. Initial results based among others on testruns with 40 nodes and analysis of this metric show that it has “fingerprint” like properties that makes it useful when verifying similarities between repeated testruns. The APE software has been put in the public domain and can be downloaded at http://apetestbed.sourceforge.net.