Hardware-in-the-Loop Emulation of Mobile Wireless Communication Environments

To address the difficulties in developing routing protocols and software applications for mobile, wireless environments, Architecture Technology Corporation developed a hardware-in-the-loop emulator known as ABSNE that creates a controllable, repeatable, virtual network environment. Using ABSNE, end-system software and hardware in a stationary, wired test bed can be evaluated as though it were in an operational mobile, wireless environment. This paper presents the need for ABSNE as well as the emulator´s design and lessons learned from using ABNSE to develop an ad hoc routing protocol and a peer-to-peer information dissemination platform.