An Efficient Object-Oriented Architecture for the Design and Implementation of an Adaptable Network Simulator

摘要

Simulation is an important part of the design and evaluation of networking protocols. Currently, there exist several network simulation tools which are available to researchers such as OPNET, ns-2, and others. Although they are very useful for a wide range of simulation experiments which involve performance evaluation of existing protocols that are supported by these tools, selecting them to verify and test the performance of new platforms and protocols that are not implemented in these programs tend to have considerable restrictions and limitations. Therefore, implementing these protocols in existing simulator packages could be relatively very difficult and time consuming. Consequently, many designers find out that it is more practical, time efficient, and often necessary to design their own simulator which includes the protocol they are evaluating. This paper presents the architecture and design of a typical object oriented event-driven network simulator. In order to validate and optimize the design, it was applied to implement a simulator which was used to evaluate the performance of two routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). Researchers can use this framework to design a network simulator which can be used to accurately implement, evaluate, and optimize their networking models, architectures, and protocols.