A real-world framework to evaluate cross-layer protocols for wireless multihop networks

摘要

The MAC layer implementation of today's commodity 802.11 wire-less network devices cannot easily be changed. But many cross-layer protocols for MANETs rely on a modified MAC layer. Therefore it is hard to test such protocols in real world environments. We propose to use a sensor network platform, the ESB sensor nodes, for this purpose. We present a software framework to make cross-layer protocol implementations and methodical experimentation feasible. The framework consists of software tools and modules for many frequently occurring tasks. It provides an extended link layer that increases the flexibility for protocol implementations on higher layers and it enables multihop communication on the ESB nodes by a network layer with static routing. An experimenter is supported by mechanisms to deploy routing tables, to gather network topol-ogy information and to obtain packet logs from all network nodes. We also give some experimentation results from an implementation of a cross-layer protocol using theframework.