Simulating Wireless Links Within a Dynamic Environment

Abstract

A couple of fundamental question for wireless networks simulators are: does the receiver hears a transmitter? and if so, how well? To answer them, the radio waves propagation characteristics of the environment must be considered. This observation has motivated the creation of widely different models, they spread from only calculating the distance between the nodes to fully describe a real deployment area with precise measurements of how a material interacts with a radio wave. As models become increasingly detailed in their description of the environment, the time required to describe and simulate it also increases. In this paper we present a model to simulate wireless links over environments that may have many different propagation characteristics, each of them suited to be simulated by its own model, and possibly changing over time. Our model is meant to be used as a stepping stone between simulations using one propagation model and simulations over a detailed description of the deployment area.