A case study of emulation workflow: From scenario definition to route analysis in tactical wireless mobile networks

In this paper1, we present a case study of emulation workflow in tactical wireless mobile network. The main contribution of this paper is an XML schema which has been recently developed by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) to support high level scenario definition for mobile network emulators in a tool independent manner. In the scenario definition phase, a high level mobility scenario defined using the NRL's XML schema is converted to WISER's run-time emulation files. Using the nodes' locations and terrain information, the RF module performs the relevant calculations and outputs a topology script that depicts node positions and link characteristics (i.e. bandwidth, BER) for all node pairs. To demonstrate emulation scenario definition workflow, Dynamic Routing Control Agent (DRCA) along with the snapshot generation tool is selected as a case study. DRCA, which is a run-time agent, monitors network topology, traffic and capacity and sets the OSPF link metrics dynamically to control routing paths. A snapshot generation tool is integrated with the WISER SDT to identify significant changes in the network. An objective is to identify a small but representative set of snapshots that capture all of the key changes in network topology over the course of a scenario. The above mentioned tools, which are integrated within the WISER SDT, are used to define and analyze DRCA scenarios for the WISER emulation system. EMANE emulation workflow is also described to demonstrate that the NRL's emulation script schema can be used to define scenarios in a tool independent manner.