Visual node module: An open-source extension to the ns-3 network simulator

A wireless visual sensor network is a collective network of directional and battery-operated sensor nodes equipped with cameras. The field of view of these nodes depends on the camera opening angle, its direction, and its depth of view. Therefore, coverage and object detection in this type of networks are more challenging compared with the traditional wireless sensor networks. Thus, many researchers propose algorithms and solutions in this field that need tests and simulations. In this paper, we focus on network simulator 3 (ns-3), which is an open-source and discrete-event tool suitable for wireless network simulation targeted primarily for research and educational use. The lack of models that can simulate visual sensor nodes in this simulator motivated us to design and develop a new visual node module as an extension of the ns-3 core libraries and also to adapt the NetAnim tool to present these nodes graphically. This module will help researchers to simulate, test, and visualize their solutions in wireless visual sensor networks field. In this paper, we present the design and implementation of the proposed module. Furthermore, we show how it can be used in ns-3 to simulate different scenarios of object detection and visualize the results in NetAnim tool.