TWIST: Thin-Waist Wireless Testbed for Measuring Interfering Traffic Stream Throughputs

Abstract

Due to the unpredictable nature of the wireless channel and its complicated interaction with the various parts of the protocol stack, evaluating accurately the effects of interference on the throughputs of competing traffic streams of wireless networks is typically impractical using analysis or simulations. However, knowing such throughputs is crucial to the performance evaluation of any wireless network designed to carry high-volume, such as multimedia, traffic and, on a more fundamental level, to the estimation of the network’s Capacity Region (CR). In this context, we have developed the Thin-waist Wireless Interfering traffic Streams Testbed (TWIST), a small-scale testbed designed specifically for addressing the unique challenges of measuring efficiently the throughputs of competing traffic streams and estimating the CR. Central to TWIST is a monitoring and management function that orchestrates the conduction of measurements and the configuration of the nodes. The testbed is remotely controlled by a web application interface (API) through which remote processes, such as high-level language programs, can consume the testbed as a service, conducting sequences of measurements determined beforehand or online.