Performance evaluation of Castalia Wireless Sensor Network simulator

Wireless Sensor Networks are by nature deployed over an undetermined geographical area with uncountable number of nodes, which makes them best studied through simulation. Due to special characteristics of these networks a number of simulation tools have been introduced by institutes and individuals each with different mechanisms and approaches. Hence, selecting a proper simulator based on the network under investigation is of vital role for the researchers. This paper provides a performance analysis of one of the renowned simulators, namely Castalia, through various scenarios and multiple cases. The study introduces some performance metrics which reflect different aspects of the tool and shows that Castalia is sensitive to large number of nodes in terms of execution time.