Assessment of the MAC Layer Behavior of Wireless Sensor Networks Simulators Using Experimental Testbeds

In general, wireless sensor networks applications design requires the assistance of a reliable simulator. The comparison of simulated versus measured behavior is undoubtedly a good measure of the simulator's reliability. The goal of this paper is to evaluate a wireless sensor network simulator (i.e. Prowler) by comparing its behavior with the measurements obtained from experimental testbeds consisting of MICAz motes. To this aim, the simulator parameters have been tuned to match the testbeds features. Moreover, representative testbeds have been developed and appropriate metrics have been defined, in order to assess the comparison. The results show that the simulator under evaluation can effectively approximate, at MAC layer, the behavior of a wireless sensor network in terms of the numbers of sent and received packets and detected collisions.