Abstract
The MeshTest wireless testbed allows users to conduct repeatable mobile experiments with real radio hardware under controlled conditions. The testbed uses shielded enclosures and a matrix switch of programmable attenuators to produce multi-hop scenarios and simulate the effects of mobility and fading. Previous work focused on the theory and performance of a single-switch testbed. Connecting more than 16 nodes requires multiple matrix switches and introduces theoretical and practical challenges. In this paper we examine, in theoretical and practical terms, two potential designs for a scalable version of the MeshTest testbed, and identify one design that seems to provide the most promising test environment. For this type of multi-switch system, performance improves a great deal if nodes that are close together in the physical scenario are also connected to the same RF switch. Rather than restrict the mobility of the nodes, we show how software virtualization can be used to migrate running node images from one switch to another to maintain the proximity of the nodes attached to each RF switch and improve testbed performance. We also describe our new testbed control architecture, that is an important part of making MeshTest scalable.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Azimuth Systems (2009) Azimuth Systems homepage. http://www.azimuthsystems.com/
Bettstetter C, Resta G, Santi P (2003) The node distribution of the random waypoint mobility model for wireless ad hoc networks. IEEE Trans Mob Comput 2(3):257–269
Bhanage G, Seskar I, Zhang Y, Raychaudhuri D (2008) Evaluation Of OpenVZ based wireless testbed virtualization. Tech. rep. WINLAB-TR-331, Rutgers University
Bhanage GD, Zhang Y, Seskar I (2008) On topology creation for an indoor wireless grid. In: WiNTECH ’08, ACM, New York, pp. 81–88. doi:10.1145/1410077.1410093
Clancy TC, Walker BD (2007) Meshtest: laboratory-based wireless testbed for large topologies. In: IEEE TridentCom, pp 1–6
Carnegie Mellon University (2008) Carnegie Mellon University wireless emulator. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~emulator/
De P, Raniwala A, Sharma S, Chiueh T (2005) MiNT: a miniaturized network testbed for mobile wireless research. In: IEEE INFOCOM
De P, Raniwala A, Sharma S, Chiueh T (2005) Design considerations for a multihop wireless network testbed. In: IEEE Communications Magazine
Gilbert JR, Miller GL, Teng SH (1995) Geometric mesh partitioning: implementation and experiments. In: Proceedings of international parallel processing symposium, pp 418–427
Kaul SK, Gruteser M, Seskar I (2006) Creating wireless multi-hop topologies on space-constrained indoor testbeds through noise injection. In: TRIDENTCOM
KVM (2009) Kernel based virtual machine. http://www.linux-kvm.org/
Kolyshkin K (2006) Virtualization in Linux. http://download.openvz.org/doc/openvz-intro.pdf
The Network Simulator ns-2 (v2.1b8a) (2001) http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/
OpenVZ (2009) OpenVZ Wiki. http://wiki.openvz.org/
Paine N (2009) Realizing a pervasive computing testbed. Slides from UT-Austin WNCG DTN Workshop
Raychaudhuri D, Seskar I, Ott M, Ganu S, Ramachandran K, Kremo H, Siracusa R, Liu H, Singh M (2005) Overview of the ORBIT radio grid testbed for evaluation of next-generation wireless network protocols. In: IEEE WCNC
Russell S, Norvig P (2002) Artificial intelligence: a modern approach. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs
Sanghani S, Brown TX, Bhandare S, Doshi S (2003) EWANT: the emulated wireless ad hoc network testbed. In: IEEE WCNC
Schulman A, Levin D, Spring N (2008) On the fidelity of 802.11 packet traces. In: PAM 2008, 9th passive and active measurement conference. Cleveland, Ohio, pp 132–141
Seligman M, Walker BD, Clancy TC (2008) Delay-tolerant network experiments on the meshtest wireless testbed. In: CHANTS ’08: Proceedings of the third ACM workshop on challenged networks. ACM, New York, pp 49–56
Skehill R, Scully P, McGrath S (2007) Characteristics, results and findings of ieee 802.11 in an rf isolated testbed. In: Personal, indoor and mobile radio communications, PIMRC 2007, pp 1–5
Su Y, Gross T (2008) Validation of a miniaturized wireless network testbed. In: WiNTECH ’08. ACM, New York, pp 25–32. doi:10.1145/1410077.1410084
Walker B, Clancy TC (2008) A quantitative evaluation of the meshtest wireless testbed. In: TridentCom
Walker B, Seastrom J (2009) Addressing scalability in a laboratory-based multihop wireless testbed. In: TRIDENTCOM
Xen (2009) The official Xen Project site. http://www.xen.org/
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
This work was funded by the Laboratory for Telecommunications Sciences, US Department of Defense. The opinions expressed in this paper reflect those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent those of the Department of Defense or US Federal Government.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Walker, B., Seastrom, J., Lee, G. et al. Addressing Scalability in a Laboratory-Based Multihop Wireless Testbed. Mobile Netw Appl 15, 435–445 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11036-009-0203-4
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11036-009-0203-4