The design of a flexible distributed testbed for communication systems

The structure and design of a simulation testbed for communication systems are described. The testbed, which is called the Distributed Simulation and Prototyping Testbed (DSPT), models the physical-layer activities of communication networks with a design that facilitates the addition of higher-layer protocols either as part of the simulation program itself or as prototype software that can execute concurrently with the simulation on a separate machine. As is typical of R&D systems, the DSPT requirements have evolved with the projects that it supports. The author shows some of the benefits of developing software using the object-oriented methodology in the dynamic R&D environment. The design involves extensions to the Simula programming language, which are easily implemented using Simula's class inheritance capability. The author explores these extensions and discusses further needs of the Simula language that appeared during the implementation of DPST.<>