DESERT Underwater: An NS-Miracle-based framework to design, simulate, emulate and realize test-beds for underwater network protocols

DESERT Underwater (short for DEsign, Simulate, Emulate and Realize Test-beds for Underwater network protocols) is a complete set of public C/C++ libraries to support the design and implementation of underwater network protocols. Its creation stems from the will to push the studies on underwater networking beyond simulations. Implementing research solutions on actual devices, in fact, is of key importance to realize a communication and networking architecture that allows heterogeneous nodes to communicate reliably in the underwater environment. In this paper, we first discuss the rationale behind this work, and, then we list and briefly describe all the DESERT Underwater libraries currently implemented. In line with the current trends in underwater networking, our approach makes it possible to reuse the same code prepared for simulations in order to realize underwater network prototypes. We also present some preliminary tests that confirm the feasibility of the proposed solution for the design and evaluation of underwater network protocols. In this perspective, we believe that DESERT Underwater is a useful tool to profitably develop and test real world applications.