Coupled simulation/emulation for cross-layer enabled mobile wireless computing

Embedded and ubiquitous computing applications using mobile nodes and wireless communication present a number of challenging issues to developers. They must deal with their primary application goal as well as network related issues, such as quality of service demands, varying network density or energy conservation requirements. To simplify system development, traditional communication software design separates these concerns into several layers. When dealing with small, energy and computational constrained devices, this layered approach hides valuable information which can be used to adapt to the changing requirements of embedded and ubiquitous computing applications. By exposing cross-layer information and enabling interaction between the layers, cross-layer design can offer substantial benefits to the application. In this paper, we propose a method for coupling multiple simulators and emulators to allow easy development and testing of solutions which span multiple layers, enabling application and communication software to be designed and tested in a realistic unified environment. To illustrate our approach to cross-layer application development, we present an application example which utilize cross-layer communication to adapt to its current surrounding.