An Implementation of Visualization System for Visualizing Network Topology and Packet Flow in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) are autonomous distributed networks, where mobile nodes communicate with each other using wireless links. Since the communication is done by wireless links, it is difficult to grasp the network situation. It becomes even more difficult when the number of nodes is increased. In this paper, we propose a visualization system for MANETs. The system can mainly visualize the network topology, state of nodes, and packet flows in MANETs using mobile PCs and wireless LAN cards. The multi-hop communication function needed for visualization of MANETs was also implemented on the application layer. For visualization of network topology, we implemented three modes: GPS mode, Hop Tree mode and manual mode. Furthermore, in order to show the effectiveness of the system, we implemented DSR protocol and visualized its packet flow. We verified by experiments that the visualization system can promptly represent the network topology, the state of each node, and the packet flow.