Simulating Mobility in WSNs: Bridging the Gap between ns-2 and TOSSIM 2.x

Abstract

Mobile wireless sensor networks are gaining increasinguse in both military and civilian applications. Priorto deployment, it is often necessary to test the communication capabilities and power consumption of these networks. Typically network simulators, such as ns-2 and TOSSIM, are used to carry out these performance tests. However, the analysis of results is restricted to comparison with others obtained using the same simulator. Therefore, the creation of a tool which allows for the comparison of results obtained with different simulators would be of great interest to the research community.This work details an extension developed for the incorporation of mobility into TOSSIM 2.x. An analysis of the working mechanisms for mobility in ns-2 was also carriedout and a tool which converts ns-2 settings into ones suitable for use in TOSSIM implemented. This tool bridges the gap between ns-2 and TOSSIM for the simulation of dynamic network scenarios. Finally, an analysis of two test simulation scenarios which include mobility is presented; these show how mobility impacts on communication in both simulators and also indicates how results obtained with the two simulators can be readily compared.