Testbed on a desktop: strategies and techniques to support multi-hop MANET routing protocol development

The development of multi-hop routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) typically begins with extensive simulation and then proceeds to implementation and real-world testing. While simulation environments can be carefully controlled, real-world environments present numerous difficulties that hinder efficient protocol implementation and testing. These include uncontrolled radio interference and propagation events, hard-to-reproduce network topologies and node mobility patterns, and experimental setups that are inconveniently large. In this paper we present a method for supporting protocol implementation and experimentation in a small testbed setting where variables can be controlled and experimental conditions can be reproduced. The testbed operation is independent of the operating system of the implementation platforms and works with most modern wireless networking interfaces without modifications. A "testbed on a desktop"constructed using the ideas we discuss allows the developer to create stable testing environments in which real-world conditions can be introduced in a convenient, deterministic and reproducible manner