Development of a Real-Time System for Visualizing Network Topology and Packet Flow in MANET Field Experiments

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) that consist of smartphones can be configured easily because most of them are equipped with cellular (3G/LTE) connections as well as WiFi/Bluetooth connections, and then new network systems and services over MANETs can be developed and implemented. However, the performance of the new network systems and services should be evaluated in MANET field experiments. In this paper, we develop a real-time system on Android terminals for visualizing network topology and packet flow in the network to conduct efficient MANET field experiments. Whenever Android terminals communicate with the neigh boring terminals over MANETs, each Android terminal can grasp the information on the neigh boring terminals, and then it sends the information on the neigh boring terminals and the packet reception logs to the log management server. Each terminal can visualize the network topology and packet flow based on these information obtained from the server in real time through cellular connections. As a result, thanks to the visualizing system, the network topology and the packet flow in the network can be confirmed in real time, and then the MANET field experiments can be conducted more efficiently. Finally, we can analyze the log data in the server to evaluate the MANET-based application software after we conducted the MANET field experiments.