On the accuracy of IEEE 802.11g wireless LAN simulations using OMNeT

In recent years wireless network research has been mostly based on simulations. Hence, it is absolutely necessary to have correct, reliable, and trustworthy simulators. Nevertheless, while most of the authors of simulation tools provide an extensive verification of their model implementations, an accurate validation of the models is often missing and left to the research community. In this paper we present results of an extensive measurement study of wireless networks conducted in a highly controlled, almost error free environment which are applied to validate the IEEE 802.11g model of OMNeT++. To this end, we used metrics like throughput, delay and packet inter-transmission to compare the measurement results to identical simulations. We show that the simulation results match the measurements well in most cases and point out the main differences. Thus, we shed some light on the accuracy of OMNeT++.