Validation of performance data using experimental verification process in wireless sensor network

Testing a new network protocol experimentally in WSNs is an important step prior to deployment because theoretical models and assumptions made often differ between real environmental properties and performance. It is imperative to ensure that the results obtained from the test are reliable and the performance observed in simulation is a valid representation of the real world. Thus there is a need to perform extensive experimental analysis and evaluation to produce results with an acceptable level of confidence. In this paper, we outline experimental statistical and analysis techniques that allow us to have some confidence in the results obtained are at least relevant to physical deployment. Using the results from hardware and software experiments, we apply our proposed Experimental Verification Process (EVP) to evaluate the performance of the Multimodal Routing Protocol (MRP) against Adhoc On-demand Distance Vector (AODV) and Not So Tiny-AODV (NST-AODV). With the EVP, we have improved the credibility of MRP.