A Versatile MANET Experimentation Platform and Its Evaluation through Experiments on the Performance of Routing Protocols under Diverse Conditions

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) are characterized by highly dynamic phenomena and volatility. These features have a significant impact on network performance and should be present in the scenarios of experiments for the assessment of MANET-related technologies. However, the currently available experimentation approaches suffer from limitations, either employing overly abstract simulation-based models that cannot capture real-world imperfections or drawing upon “monolithic” testbeds suited only to a narrow set of predetermined technologies, operational scenarios, or environmental conditions. Toward addressing these limitations, this work proposes a versatile platform that can accommodate many of the complexities present in real-world scenarios while still remaining highly flexible and customizable to enable a wide variety of MANET-related experiments. The platform is characterized by a modular architecture with clearly defined modules for the signaling between peer mobile nodes, the tracking of each node’s location and motion, the routing protocol functionality, and the management of communication messages at each node. The relevant software runs on inexpensive Raspberry Pi-based commodity hardware, which can be readily attached to robotic devices for moving the network nodes in accordance with controlled mobility patterns. Moreover, through an appropriate tuning of certain modules, a number of important operational conditions can be precisely controlled through software, e.g., restricting the communications range (thus reducing the network density) or for emulating the mobility patterns of nodes. The effectiveness and versatility of the proposed platform are demonstrated through the realization of a series of experiments on the performance comparison of selected routing protocols under diverse network density conditions.