Network and System Simulation Tools for Next Generation Networks: a Case Study

The modern information society will continue to emerge, and demand for wireless communication services will grow. Future generation wireless networks are considered necessary for the support of emerging services with their increasing requirements. Future generation wireless networks are characterized by a distributed, dynamic, self-organizing architecture (I. F. Akyildiz et al., 2006). These wireless networks are broadly categorized into different wireless networks according to their specific characteristics. Typical examples include Ad-Hoc/Mesh Networks, Sensor Networks, Cognitive Radio Networks, etc as shown in figure 1. These wireless networks could then constitute the infrastructure of numerous applications such as emergency and health-care systems, military, gaming, advertisements, customer-to-customer applications, etc. Not only their importance in military applications is growing, but also their impact on business is increasing. The emergence of these wireless networks created many open issues in network design too. More and more researchers are putting their efforts in designing the future generation wireless networks.