Modeling autonomous networks with a variety of channels
VisualSim Wireless is a modelling and simulation framework for wireless and sensor networks that builds on and leverages VisualSim. Modelling of wireless networks require sophisticated modelling of communication channels, sensors, ad-hoc networking protocols, localization strategies, media access control protocols, and energy consumption in sensor nodes. This modelling framework is designed to support a component-based construction of such models. It supports actor-oriented definition of network nodes, wireless communication channels, physical media such as acoustic channels, and wired subsystems. The software architecture consists of a set of base classes for defining channels and sensor nodes, a library of subclasses that provide certain specific channel models and node models, and an extensible visualization framework.
The model has parameters that you can experiment with. The parameters of two components, SoundSource and SoundChannel. The SoundSource has a single parameter, called soundRange.In the SoundChannel parameters, you could set a non-zero value for the lossProbability, in which case only some of the sound events will be detected. Setting the seed to a non-zero value results in repeatable experiments, meaning that each execution will yield the same sequence of random numbers.
Some of the parameters and blocks used here are as follows:
Custom nodes can be defined by sub-classing the base classes and defining the behaviour in Java or by creating composite models using any of several VisualSim modelling libraries. Custom channels can be defined by sub-classing the WirelessChannel base class and by attaching functionality defined in VisualSim models. It is intended to build models that include sophisticated elements from several aspects.
Some of the key features of wireless sensors are as follows:
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) can be defined as a self-configured and infrastructureless wireless networks to monitor physical or environmental conditions, such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, motion or pollutants and to cooperatively pass their data through the network to a main location or sink where the data can be observed and analysed. A sink or base station acts like an interface between users and the network. One can retrieve required information from the network by injecting queries and gathering results from the sink. Typically a wireless sensor network contains hundreds of thousands of sensor nodes. The sensor nodes can communicate among themselves using radio signals. A wireless sensor node is equipped with sensing and computing devices, radio transceivers and power components.