A Simulation Framework for Energy-Aware Wireless Sensor Network Protocols

We discuss a modular simulation framework to investigate the energy efficiency of different routing protocols used in resource constrained wireless sensor networks. Our simulation framework provides a flexible tool to build diverse protocols by combining existing building blocks at different layers and to analyse how several factors such as routing strategies, MAC protocols, link and node failures, energy on path, network topology changes, in-network processing, scheduling at MAC layer and other adjustable configuration parameters influence the energy efficiency of the protocol. The simulator extends the open source OMNeT++ and its mobility framework and provides a framework to rapidly develop, to experiment with and to evaluate efficiently routing protocols; the quantitative effort to design new routing protocols and to integrate them into a complete protocol stack is considerably reduced. Moreover, we develop complete modules for MAC and network protocols; in order to study and evaluate the behavior and lifetime of the network we implement independent energy and statistics modules. We provide also new features such as add/delete, move, dis/reconnect nodes during simulation, which allow to analyse the impact of dynamic topology changes.