The design of a flexible distributed testbed for communication systems

The structure and design of a simulation testbed for communication systems are described. The testbed, which is called the Distributed Simulation and Prototyping Testbed (DSPT), models the physical-layer activities of communication networks with a design that facilitates the addition of higher-layer protocols either as part of the simulation program itself or as prototype software that can execute concurrently with the simulation on a separate machine. As is typical of R&D systems, the DSPT requirements have evolved with the projects that it supports. The author shows some of the benefits of developing software using the object-oriented methodology in the dynamic R&D environment. The design involves extensions to the Simula programming language, which are easily implemented using Simula´s class inheritance capability. The author explores these extensions and discusses further needs of the Simula language that appeared during the implementation of DPST.<>