Embedded systems for prototyping underwater acoustic networks: The DESERT Underwater libraries on board the PandaBoard and NetDCU

In this paper, we consider underwater network prototyping using the network simulation engine NS-Miracle, and investigate different embedded computer boards that can be employed for this task. In particular, we consider two embedded platforms with considerably different capabilities: the PandaBoard (a powerful platform that does not require any cross-compilation effort) and version 5.2 of the NetDCU board, which is much more constrained in terms of computational power, RAM and storage space. After describing the steps required to install NS-Miracle and the DESERT Underwater libraries on board these platforms, we report on the field experiments conducted to test the corresponding prototypes. Our results include a comparison between the two investigated platforms in terms of resources required (e.g., memory occupancy and energy expenditure) and performance in the execution of real-time software (e.g., delays introduced within the simulation framework). We believe that our work represents an interesting step towards the realization of underwater network prototypes made of heterogeneous nodes.