Hybrid Testbed Enabling Run-Time Operations for Wireless Applications

In this paper, we propose a hybrid Testbed enabling Run-time Operations for Wireless network Applications (TROWA). TROWA is a wireless network emulator and its simulation core is based on the network simulator MobiREAL. TROWA can emulate packet transmissions in multi-hop wireless networks in real-time, with realistic mobility models of urban pedestrians. Also it provides APIs that allow real stations to connect with their simulated networks with a little modification of applications and protocols. One of the significant features of TROWA is the control interfaces to manipulate the movement of simulated nodes during the execution of applications. This enables performance analysis and algorithm validation in an efficient way. Additionally, TROWA can improve the accuracy of real-time simulation by prioritizing the simulation events. By several experiments for a VoIP application, we show the usefulness of TROWA.