High-Level Sensor Network Simulations for Routing Performance Evaluations

For wireless sensor networks a wide variety of adhoc routing algorithms are available in the literature. Typically, each algorithm comes with its own platform and application scenario, which makes it hard to compare different routing algorithms. In this paper we introduce a high level simulation environment, which provides a fast and easy way for routing performance evaluations. PROWLER, a probabilistic network simulator is developed with various radio models and a CSMA MAC layer. RMASE, an application built on the top of PROWLER, provides a layered routing architecture with routing scenario specifications and performance metrics for algorithm evaluations. Both PROWLER and RMASE are easily extensible with new models, metrics and components. A routing algorithm repository has been developed with a set of commonly used routing components and algorithms from various research groups. A real-world routing scenario is used as an example to demonstrate the use of this high level simulation environment for routing performance evaluations. Keywordslayered routing architecture; sensor network simulations; testing and performance evaluations