Emulating end-to-end losses and delays for ad hoc networks

Ad hoc networks have gained place in the research area recently. There are many researches regarding different topics related to such networks, such as routing, media access control, security, scalability, and many others. There are two usual methods to test and evaluate ad hoc networks performance: simulations and real test-beds. A network emulator is a tradeoff between pure simulations and real test-beds. Here, we propose a multi-hop wireless ad hoc network emulator that uses the advantages of Network Simulator (NS-2) and traffic shaping tool (DummyNet), that we called SEDLANE [Simple Emulation of Delay and Loss for Ad Hoc Networks Environment]. SEDLANE is a network emulator that is based on TCP behaviour characteristics. Using SEDLANE, we can emulate a whole multihop ad hoc network through the data packet loss and Round Trip Time (RTT) values over the TCP connection. SEDLANE helps testing and evaluating ad hoc network protocols using very simple and inexpensive test-bed configuration. The results confirm that; introducing SEDLANE within a simple configuration network (possibly 2 nodes) gives exactly the same results as those obtained when simulating such networks.