Effects of Detail in Wireless Network Simulation

Heidemann, John and Bulusu, Nirupama and Elson, Jeremy and Intanagonwiwat, Chalermek and Lan, Kun-chan and Xu, Ya and Ye, Wei and Estrin, Deborah and Govindan, Ramesh
USC/Information Sciences Institute

citation

John Heidemann, Nirupama Bulusu, Jeremy Elson, Chalermek Intanagonwiwat, Kun-chan Lan, Ya Xu, Wei Ye, Deborah Estrin and Ramesh Govindan 2001. Effects of Detail in Wireless Network Simulation. Proceedings of the SCS Multiconference on Distributed Simulation (Phoenix, Arizona, USA, Jan. 2001), 3–11. [PDF]

abstract

Experience with wired networks has provides guidance about what level of detail is appropriate for simulation-based protocol studies. Wireless simulations raise many new questions about appropriate levels of detail in simulation models for radio propagation and energy consumption. This paper describes the trade-offs associated with adding detail to simulation models. We evaluate the effects of detail in five case studies of wireless simulations for protocol design. Ultimately the researcher must judge what level of detail is required for a given question, but we suggest two approaches to cope with varying levels of detail. When error is not correlated, networking algorithms that are robust to a range of errors are often stressed in similar ways by random error as by detailed models. We also suggest visualization techniques that can help pinpoint incorrect details and manage detail overload.

reference

@inproceedings{Heidemann01a,
  author = {Heidemann, John and Bulusu, Nirupama and Elson, Jeremy and Intanagonwiwat, Chalermek and Lan, Kun-chan and Xu, Ya and Ye, Wei and Estrin, Deborah and Govindan, Ramesh},
  title = {Effects of Detail in Wireless Network Simulation},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the  {SCS} Multiconference on Distributed Simulation},
  year = {2001},
  sortdate = {2001-01-01},
  project = {ant, scadds, scowr},
  jsubject = {network_simulation},
  publisher = {Society for Computer Simulation},
  address = {Phoenix, Arizona, USA},
  month = jan,
  pages = {3--11},
  jlocation = {johnh: folder: network/simulation},
  keywords = {network simulation, wireless network simulation;
  		simulation validation, detail, accuracy;
  		energy-aware ad hoc routing; data diffusion; localization;
  		robotics; network protocol visualization},
  url = {https://ant.isi.edu/%7ejohnh/PAPERS/Heidemann01a.html},
  psurl = {https://ant.isi.edu/%7ejohnh/PAPERS/Heidemann01a.ps.gz},
  pdfurl = {https://ant.isi.edu/%7ejohnh/PAPERS/Heidemann01a.pdf},
  myorganization = {USC/Information Sciences Institute}
}