NEMAN: a network emulator for mobile ad-hoc networks

Development of applications and protocols for wireless ad-hoc networks has always been a challenge. Spe- cific characteristics such as frequent topology changes due to nodes moving around, popping up or being turned off, need to be considered from the earliest stages of develop- ment. Since testing and evaluation using genuine wireless devices is both expensive and highly impractical, other tools need to be used in the development phase. Simulators give a very detailed model of lower layers' behaviors, but code often needs to be completely rewritten in order to be used on actual physical devices. Emulators present a trade-off be- tween real test beds and simulators, providing a virtual wireless network at the lowest layers, and yet allowing real code to be run on the higher layers. In this paper, we pre- sent such an emulation platform, called NEMAN, that al- lows us to run a virtual wireless network of hundreds of nodes on a single end-user machine. NEMAN has shown to be an important and very useful tool during development of different applications and protocols for our project, includ- ing a key management protocol and a distributed event noti- fication service.