TimSim: A Timestep-Based Wireless Ad-Hoc Network Simulator

Wireless hosts can communicate with each other without a fixed infrastructure in wireless ad-hoc networks. Deploying and monitoring a large number of hosts in such networks involves high cost and intensive labor. As a result, most experiments are achievable through simulation. However, most simulators currently used are intended to evaluate individual routing protocols or algorithms. Direct simulation of an application´s source code is not supported. To simulate an application, we have to extract the protocols or algorithms from the source code and rewrite them in accordance with the simulator´s requirements. In this paper, we introduce a new wireless ad-hoc network simulator called TimSim. TimSim focuses on simulating the source code of wireless ad-hoc network application directly. As a unique feature, TimSim provides some similar APIs with real device driver so that users can simulate their source code on TimSim with only a few modifications. Driven by a timestep-based simulation engine, TimSim can simulate the data transmitted over wireless ad-hoc networks in bit-level. Additionally, we import database to store the simulation data that TimSim generates. Performance evaluation by means of a series of benchmark experiments demonstrates the efficiency of TimSim. Also a case study is presented to illustrate the practicability of TimSim.