Delay-tolerant network experiments on the meshtest wireless testbed

  • Authors:

  • Matthew Seligman;Brenton D. Walker;T. Charles Clancy

  • Affiliations:

  • Laboratory for Telecommunications Sciences, College Park, MD, USA;Laboratory for Telecommunications Sciences, College Park, MD, USA;Laboratory for Telecommunications Sciences, College Park, MD, USA

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the third ACM workshop on Challenged networks
  • Year:
  • 2008

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) are a class of networks in which a contemporaneous end-to-end path from source to destination generally does not exist. Such networks use on a store-carry-forward communication model which relies on the mobility of nodes to transfer data between geographically separated nodes. DTN researchers have relied heavily on simulation for evaluation, due to the difficulty and expense of running live experiments with real devices running real DTN implementations. MeshTest is a laboratory-based multi-hop wireless testbed that subjects real wireless nodes running real DTN implementations to reproducible mobile scenarios. It uses shielded enclosures and an RF matrix switch to dynamically control the attenuation experienced between pairs of nodes. The testbed is an ideal platform for DTN testing, offering convenient experimental control and data management. We have installed the DTN2 Reference Implementation on wireless nodes within the testbed, and in this paper, we report on a series of experiments based on the well-known Data MULE model. Specifically, we investigate the effects of buffer limitations on the data MULEs and sensors node, velocity of the data MULEs, and bundle generation size and rate. We report results on message delivery rate and latency for varying experimental parameters. We found that an encounter between nodes does not guarantee a successful data transfer. In our experience, the quality and duration of the link, contention, and load on the nodes all influence its performance.