Creating a simulation to assess performance of MAC-level opportunistic forwarding schemes in linear cluster topologies

Abstract

The goal of this project was to create a software simulation of a wireless network. The wireless nodes should use a CSMA MAC protocol and should be able to have their back off distributions changed so the performance differences can be studied for future research. The OMNeT++ and MiXiM frameworks were used to provide an environment to build the simulation in. However during implementation bugs in the MiXiM framework slowed down progress and has left the simulation with errors. The bit error rate is not being calculated correctly is one such error. Before the simulation could be used for research purposes these issues need to be resolved. The design of the wireless devices allows for the back off distribution to be changed easily between simulation runs. Having it specified in the configuration file allows for the distributions to be assigned based on a nodes group number, or even assigned individually.