The concept of radio channel emulator for MANET tests

Abstract

To provide reliable communications, mobile wireless networks should contain link quality monitoring, adaptive routing and interference avoidance mechanisms. Their efficiency is one of the most critical parameters of the network, so these elements should be robustly designed and thoroughly tested. To minimize time and costs, tests should be performed using a laboratory-based wire test-bed, which would contain devices emulating wireless channels and ensure reproducibility of results. This article presents a concept of an analog and digital radio channel emulator. For the analog radio channel emulator, a method for calculating and setting the attenuation matrix is presented, together with results of the attenuation settings accuracy. For the digital radio channel emulator, the concept of device is presented, along with the calculation method, device control, and preliminary results.