Design of a Realtime Network Topology and Packet Flow Visualizing System for MANET Field Experiments

Abstract

In order to evaluate the performance of the network system in MANET field experiments, we have to understand the network topology among mobile terminals in real time and conduct the field experiments efficiently. In this paper, we design a system to visualize a network topology and packet flow in real time, and implement it in Android terminals for MANET field experiments. In case that Android terminals communicate with each other over MANETs, each terminal can grasp the information on the neighboring terminals and visualize the topology between the neighboring terminals and its own terminal in the proposed system. In addition, since each terminal sends the information on the neighboring terminals and the transmission and reception of data packets to the log management server, it grasps these information from the server and can visualize the network topology and packet flow in real time. As a result, thanks to these mechanisms in the visualizing system, we can understand the network situation such as the network topology and the packet flow in real time, and then conduct the MANET field experiments more efficiently. Finally, we can analyze the log data in the server to evaluate the MANET-based application software after we conducted the MANET field experiments.