# Web-Based Toolkit for Performance Simulation and Analysis of Power Line Communication Networks
## 4 Description of the Developed Toolkit
### SimBPL  
Figure 6 shows the dashboard developed in this case. It can be seen that it is composed of three main areas: an area devoted to the representation of the cell (on the left-hand side), which allows creating and editing cells and checking their representation both in graph format and in table or matrix format (where each entry represents the distance between this pair of nodes); an area devoted to the configuration and execution of the simulations (on the right-hand side); and an area with a list of the executed simulations, which allows one to access the results by clicking on any of the links. Regarding the representation of the cell, as was explained in Section 2.3, in this kind of cell, there are two important roles: the master and the gateway. The master is responsible for managing the communications (based on TDMA) within the cell. The gateway oversees forwarding all the data to the backend of the utility (typically it is a node equipped with broadband access equipment). The master is represented by a star, and the gateway is drawn in pink. Two different nodes may implement these two roles, as shown in Figure 6.  
Regarding the configuration and execution of simulations, the following parameters can be configured [5]:  
Figure 5: Low-level design of the web application developed for SimPRIME. WEB APP1 and WEB APP2 refer to different screens of the developed web app. Figure 6: Dashboard of the web application developed for SimBPL. * Frequency band: a drop-down allows choosing between Mode 1 (2-7 MHz) or Mode 2 (8-18 MHz). * Background noise: The Annex F \"Channel and noise analysis and models for BPL system\" of the IEEE 1901 standard [27] is responsible for calculating the background noise power for the best or worst case at the specified frequency. The background noise power can also be entered manually through the web interface (in dBm). * Smart Nothing: If active, Smart Nothing is used to mitigate the effects of potential interference. This mechanism implies a penalization of 23% in the date rate [29]. * Attenuations: three different types of attenuations are considered: *  
Based on this information, the tool provides the following results graphically through the web interface:  
* Percentage of packets by type applied to different graphics: total packets, packets received by the data concentrator (uplink), and packets sent by the data concentrator (downlink);
* Percentage of packets sent/received by the data concentrator (uplink vs. downlink);
* Evolution of the SNR over time given the MAC address of a smart meter;
* Smart meters with a greater number of unregistrations in 15 min intervals;
* Percentage of connections made to each of the smart meters working as switches given the MAC address of a specific smart meter;
* Average SNR for each smart meter;
* Number of promotion requests caused by each smart meter without direct connectivity;
* Number of nodes relying on smart meters that act as switches--the 25 switches with the largest number of nodes depending on them are shown;
* Status of the logical topology, generated every minute, as well as a hierarchical diagram of the first snapshot of the selected interval;
* TTRi (time required for the concentrator to retrieve a consumption report after the request has been made) vs. NID (SID + LNID);  
Likewise, the tool also provides the following information in table format:  
* List of nodes sorted by the number of unregistrations of the nodes depending on them;
* List of nodes sorted by their number of unregistrations. Figure 7 illustrates the relationship between the inputs, that the tool considers and the output that it provides. Figure 8 shows the web page developed in this case to upload a new scenario to be analyzed. It can be seen that this web page allows uploading the files generated by the PRIME concentrator (S11 file, topology file, and event file) associated with the scenario to be studied.