Towards cloud based mobile ad hoc network simulation

Simulations are considered as the most convenient approach for validating any research proposal. A simulator attempts to model a real-world setting in order to analyze the behavior of any algorithm. A large number of simulation software for ad hoc network has been proposed in literature. These simulators are based on execution of simulation on standalone computers. This paper introduces the notion of `simulation as a service' for mobile ad hoc network's simulation based on cloud computing. Cloud computing is an emerging discipline that enables outsourcing computing task remotely based on pay-as-you-go model. The paper provides a generalized architecture to perform ad hoc network simulations on cloud platforms. Similar to different service models provided by cloud, some service models have been introduced for cloud based simulation. The proposed approach provides different advantages such as dynamic service provisioning to support large scale simulation, sharing of simulation models and reduced cost for simulation etc. The proposed tool has been implemented on Heroku platform that demonstrates the scalability of proposed approach.