Emulating Loss and Delay for AD HOC Networks

Ad hoc networks have gained place in the research area recently. There are many researches regarding different topics related to such networks, such as routing, media access control, security, scalability, and many others. There are two usual methods to test and evaluate the performance of ad hoc networks: simulations and real test-bed. A network emulator is a tradeoff between pure simulation and real test-bed. Here, we propose a multi-hop wireless ad hoc network emulator that uses the advantages of Network Simulator (NS-2) and traffic shaping (DummyNet), that is called SEDLANE. SEDLANE is a network emulator that is based on TCP behavior characteristics. Using SEDLANE, we can emulate a whole multi-hop ad hoc network through the data packet loss and Round Trip Time (RTT) values over the TCP connection. SEDLANE helps testing and evaluating ad hoc network protocols using very simple and inexpensive test-bed configuration. The results confirm that; introducing SEDLANE within a simple configuration network (possibly 2 nodes) gives exactly the same results as having a wireless mobile multi-hop ad hoc network of any size.