Title: Wireless network simulators relevance compared to a real testbed in outdoor and indoor environments

Authors: Abderrezak Rachedi; Stéphane Lohier; Sylvain Cherrier; Ismail Salhi

Addresses: Computer Science Laboratory (UMR 8049 LIGM), University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée (UPEMLV), Champs sur Marne, France ' Computer Science Laboratory (UMR 8049 LIGM), University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée (UPEMLV), Champs sur Marne, France ' Computer Science Laboratory (UMR 8049 LIGM), University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée (UPEMLV), Champs sur Marne, France ' Computer Science Laboratory (UMR 8049 LIGM), University of Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée (UPEMLV), Champs sur Marne, France

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a comparative study between results generated by a real 802.11 testbed in different outdoor and indoor environments and three usual network simulators (NS2, QualNet and OPNET). The goal of this study is to evaluate the relevance of the low layers recently implemented in these simulators. The motivation of this paper is to provide a guide to researchers to choose and parameterise a simulator according to a selected context. The study shows that the simulation results can be rather close to the experimental results. However, they are very dependent on the tuning of the physical layer parameters and the selected propagation models.

Keywords: wireless networks; 802.11; network simulators; testbed; propagation models; performance; modelling; simulation; tuning; physical layer parameters.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAACS.2012.044785

International Journal of Autonomous and Adaptive Communications Systems, 2012 Vol.5 No.1, pp.88 - 101

Published online: 05 Dec 2014 *

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