Advanced Network Technologies Virtual Lab: A Human-Computer Interface for performing experiments on Wireless Sensor Networks

Research analysis manifest clear trends of growing interest of the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) towards virtualized learning. To keep up this trend, as well as the pace with the rapid advancement of software technologies, the Advanced Network Technologies Virtual Lab (ANT VLab) has been developed by us at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. This lab exposes students to various advanced topics including Wi-Fi, WiMAX, Satellite Networks, Mobile Adhoc Networks (MANETs), Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), Bluetooth, Zigbee, and encourages them to work on related problems in a partially constrained environment. Apart from providing detailed theory on each topic, each virtual experiment in the lab has a set of exercises to be solved using remote network simulations. Network Simulator-2 (NS-2) / Mannasim framework and Network Simulator-3 (NS-3) have been used for this purpose. The ANT VLab also offers benefits such as reduced software and hardware costs as against setting up an actual advanced network technology lab, improved learning by interactive visualization, and self-learning advanced network technologies in the absence of a real-life instructor. Additionally, the students can interface and learn at their own pace any time and from any place having a PC with high speed Internet connectivity. WSNs is an emerging field in computer networking. In this paper, we discuss the development of a module for WSNs, that can be used for performing different WSNs experiments in the virtual mode.