Simulators, Emulators, and Test-beds for Internet of Things: A Comparison

In the last few years, the world has seen extensive growth in the field of IoT in both research & deployment and adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT). The number of IoT devices is increasing multi-fold each year. So, the state of IoT is under rigorous research & deployment by several researchers across the globe to develop new algorithms, techniques, and protocols to secure IoT networks further. In this paper, we compare sixteen simulators (IOTSim, IoTIFY, Bevywise-IoT, etc), four emulators (Cooja, NetSim, MAMMotH, NCTUns 6.0), and six test-beds (MBTAAS, FIT IoT-LAB, etc) for IoT on the basis of Scope, Type, Programming language, IoT layers, Scale of Operation, IoT Standards, API Integration, Cyber Resilience, Service Domain, and Security Measures. Its comparison helps for modeling techniques, proper simulation, and testing for algorithm validation/proof-of-concept implementation in IoT. This comparison will help to support researchers and developers for choosing suitable tools for their application. We have also discussed Vertical & Horizontal Analysis of existing Simulators, Emulators, and Test-beds. This will help in testing the research ideas before moving towards live implementation.