Enhancing ASSERT: Making an Accurate Testbed Friendly

1. Enhancing ASSERT: Making an Accurate Testbed Friendly EhsanNourbakhsh, Ryan Burchfield, S. Venkatesan, Neeraj Mittal, Ravi Prakash Department of Computer Science University of Texas at Dallas

2. Motivation • Made observations in [RFiJ] regarding experimentation • In [ASSERT] we proposed nine main propositions, and built a testbed based on them • Advanced wireleSSEnvironment Research Testbed • Our focus changed from only fidelity to also include usability • Proper usage of the testbed should not require comprehensive knowledge of the design and implementation of the testbed.

3. Propositions • Accuracy • accurately reflect wireless network behavior • Controllability • provide enough control to configure topology and environment conditions • Mobility • emulate mobility of the nodes • Repeatability • conduct experiments that are reproducible and easily repeatable • Cost effectiveness • be cost effective in terms of hardware, manpower, space and time requirements to set up, run experiments on and maintain • Data collection • provide necessary tools to collect and analyze data • Resource sharing • be able to share the available resources to conduct multiple experiments without interfering with each other • Multi-nodal capability • support many types of nodes • Scalability • have the ability to scale to a large number of nodes

4. Hardware Design • Site: unit for hardware design • Microprocessor runs Linux • Black-box view of Unit Under Test (UUT) • Control and interaction with the UUT

5. Hardware Design (contd.)

6. Hardware Design (contd.) • RF board

7. Hardware Design(contd.)

8. Hardware Design (contd.)

9. Software Slices • software is divided into slices • each slice implements a specific functionality • Some of the major ones • diagnostics • user interface • experiment control • topology mapper • attenuator • UUT control

10. Software Slices (contd.)

11. Feedback Analysis • Graduated from “functionality centric” to “user centric” • “it works” vs. “it is easy to work with” • Ease of running experiments results in expectation of enhanced tools • easily upload their custom images to UUTs • ability to verify proper experiment start and progress • tools for debugging and investigating collected data • possibility of creating customized distribution models.

12. Capability and Flexibility • Cable Map • Topology Maker • Topology Mapping • Distribution Cleanup • Application Parameters

13. Cable Map

14. Topology Maker

15. Topology Mapping Time

16. Verification • Log Viewer • Remote Access

17. Log Viewer

18. Run Time Average time for each task over three runs for a 30 minute experiment with 24 nodes

19. Data Collection • Timestamp Adjustments in UUT Logs • Log Download • RSS Log

20. RSS Log Viewer Unicast by 1013 ACK by 1007 Reception by 1007, 1016 Broadcast by 1007 Broadcast by 1013

21. References • [RFiJ] Ryan Burchfield and EhsanNourbakhsh and Jeff Dix and KunalSahu and S. Venkatesan and Ravi Prakash, “RF in the Jungle: Effect of Environment Assumptions on Wireless Experiment Repeatability,” ICC 2009 • [ASSERT] EhsanNourbakhsh and Jeff Dix and Paul Johnson and Ryan Burchfield and S. Venkatesan and Neeraj Mittal and Ravi Prakash, “ASSERT: A Wireless Networking Testbed,”TridentCom2010