detailed models for sensor network simulations and their impact on network performance
Recent trends in sensor network simulation can be divided between less flexible but accurate emulation based approach and more generic but less detailed network simulator models. We offer an approach with the flexibility of network simulators and provides the accuracy comparable to emulation based approaches. We describe the design and architecture of sensor network simulator which provides a rich suite of following models: sensing stack to model wave and diffusion based sensor channels, an accurate battery model, processor power consumption model, energy consumption model and sensor network based traffic model. We also present our study on the effects of detailed modeling on the performance of higher layer protocols. We describe the impact of using accurate models for battery, processor power consumption and traffic models on the network layer statistics as network lifetime and availability, throughput and routing overhead. Our results show there is high sensitivity of model accuracy on network and application level statistics. In extreme cases we have noticed an inversion of results with our accurate models as compared with previous generation of abstract models.
model sensor senses sensor network network network simulation simulation network performance performance flexibility emulation generation generation accuracy design architecture diffuse batteries processor power consumption energy consumption traffic model effect layer statistics network lifetime availability throughput routing sensitive applications abstraction generic