Effects of Detail in Wireless Network Simulation
Nirupama Bulusu, Jeremy Elson, Deborah Estrin, Ramesh Govindan, John Heidemann, Chalermek Intanagonwiwat, Nader Salehi, Kun-chan Lan, Ya Xu and Wei Ye
USC/Information Sciences Institute
Citation
Nirupama Bulusu, Jeremy Elson, Deborah Estrin, Ramesh Govindan, John Heidemann, Chalermek Intanagonwiwat, Nader Salehi, Kun-chan Lan, Ya Xu and Wei Ye. Effects of Detail in Wireless Network Simulation. Technical Report ISI-TR-2000-523. USC/Information Sciences Institute. [PDF] [alt 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 approriate levels of detail in simulation models for radio propagation and energy consumption. This paper describes the trade-offs in more detailed or abstract simulation models. We evaluate the effects of detail in four 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.Bibtex Citation
@techreport{Bulusu00b,
author = {Bulusu, Nirupama and Elson, Jeremy and Estrin, Deborah and Govindan, Ramesh and Heidemann, John and Intanagonwiwat, Chalermek and Salehi, Nader and Lan, Kun-chan and Xu, Ya and Ye, Wei},
title = {Effects of Detail in Wireless Network Simulation},
institution = {USC/Information Sciences Institute},
year = {2000},
sortdate = {2000-06-01},
project = {ilense, vint, ant, scadds, scowr},
jsubject = {chronological},
number = {ISI-TR-2000-523},
note = {An updated version of this paper appears as \url{https://ant.isi.edu/%7ejohnh/PAPERS/Heidemann01a.html}},
month = jun,
jlocation = {johnh: folder: vint},
keywords = {wireless network simulation, detail},
url = {https://ant.isi.edu/%7ejohnh/PAPERS/Bulusu00b.html},
pdfurl = {https://ant.isi.edu/%7ejohnh/PAPERS/Bulusu00b.pdf},
myorganization = {USC/Information Sciences Institute},
copyrightholder = {author}
}