Wireless Network Emulator User Guide

Introduction

The wireless network emulator testbed allows users to run wireless fully repeatable and controllable wireless experiments using real wireless hardware (802.11b devices). Here are some pointers to information about the emulator:

One page architecture overview that is very useful for first time users.
Research papers describing the emulator architecture and emulator software in more detail.
Some examples of research papers that include emulator measurements in support of mobile and wireless research, controlled experiments, and wireless link characterization.

More information on the wireless network emulator can be found on the emulator web page and list of papers.

Getting Started

The wireless network emualtor is available to external users. Here is how you can get access:

Using the Emulator

Once your account is set up, you are ready to use the emulator:

First of all, Create an experiment on the CMUlab webpage;
Then, learn how to Configure the nodes assigned to the experiment.
Now you are ready to define your own experiment set-up (the world model and the signal propogagtion model). Here are the instructions on how to set up and run simple experiments on the Emulator Controller (emucontrol-1.ece.cmu.edu)

Here is a list of Examples we provide and a Tutorial that explains how to run these examples, including some screen shots. You can find out about node capabilities and availability from emulator configuration page or by going to the CMUlab status page: https://boss.cmcl.cs.cmu.edu/nodecontrol_list.php3.

The above information will only allow you to run simple, existing experiments. If you want to specify and run your own experiments, you will need to learn how to control the signal propogation environment, which we explain below.

Defining Experiments

Before delving into the documentation in this section, it is useful to understand how the emulator software is structured.

Controlling the Signal Propagation Environment

You can specify and dynamically control the signal propagation environment in two different ways

Direct control through the definition and control of channel models.
Indirectly by controlling node placement and movement in an emulated emulated world model.

How to Define Experiments

The definition of an experiment on the wireless network emulator has two components. The first part is the specification of the nodes and their configuration through CMUlab, as described in create an experiments . The second part is the definition of the experiment itself on emucontrol-1, which can be done in three different ways:

GUI: useful for informal exploration, testing and debuggin.
Scripts: useful for simple experiments that require control over timing.
Java: useful for arbitrary experiments. The full Emulator API can be found in the API Javadocs.

The CMUlab hardware page list the nodes that are currently supported on the wireless network emulator. The current system configuration shows what nodes are currently available (will be replaced by CMUlab page).

Getting Help

You can get help in two ways:

First check the Frequently Asked Questions page.
If you cannot find an answer, send mail to a emulator-help@cs.cmu.edu with a detailed description of your problem or question.