SimANet – A Large Scalable, Distributed Simulation Framework for Ambient Networks

Abstract

In this paper, we present a new simulation platform for complex, radio standard spanning mobile Ad Hoc networks. SimANet - Simulation Platform for Ambient Networks - allows the coexistence of multiple radio modules with different communication technologies and protocol stacks within one node, which can be used concurrently. By the usage of efficient data structures like Randomised Skip Quadtrees, SimANet allows the analysis and evaluation of large scale, heterogeneous network topologies in both static and dynamic simulation scenarios based on different movement models. The software design enables a modular extension with additional models for power consumption, communication complexity or barrier simulation. Furthermore, an integrated MPI library provides the possibility to run distributed test cycles on parallel computing systems. Thereby, special sliding time window algorithms avoid the typical disadvantage of a slow network interconnection structure and allow a dynamic load balancing on the available hardware resources during the runtime. With the main focus on the evaluation of abstract multi-interface, multi-standard communication concepts, we compare the functionality and the complexity of SimANet with well-known simulation tools like ns2-MIRACLE, ns2-NW-Node, OMNet++ and TeNS. Simulation results for different application scenarios estimate features like versatility, practicality or usability in large scale network topologies with up to 105 nodes.