Collaborative Research: CRI: IAD A Miniaturized Robotic Testbed for Development, Testing, and Evaluation of Protocols for Multi-Hop Wireless Networks

用于无线网络的模拟工具无法准确捕获无线协议在实际部署中的行为。另一方面，跨越大片地理区域的物理试验台的部署、管理和重新配置成本很高。我们建议开发一种小型化的多跳无线测试床，称为Mint，它将为协议开发、调试和测试提供灵活和高保真的平台，同时显著减少对物理空间的需求。Mint的一个关键架构特征是它使用移动机器人来承载无线网络节点，这些节点可以通过基于串口的API进行编程控制。通过以受控的方式衰减无线电信号，空间需求被“微型化”。此外，Mint还将支持自动故障注入和分析测试、远程测试床可重构性和24x7自主操作。Mint试验台将在多个研究项目中进行实验研究，如跨层优化、最优路由和传输调度、有效的路由成本度量、多通道网状网的资源管理、传感器网络的节能、可扩展的基于地理的服务提供以及移动低功耗无线链路建模。我们的最终目标是使研究人员能够通过互联网远程访问Mint，以便在微型环境中研究他们的无线协议。

Simulation tools for wireless networks do not accurately capture the behavior of wireless protocols in real-world deployments. On the other hand, physical testbeds spanning large geographic areas are expensive to deploy, manage, and reconfigure. We propose to develop a miniaturized multi-hop wireless testbed, called Mint, that will provide a flexible and high-fidelity platform for protocol development, debugging, and testing, while significantly reducing the physical space requirement. A key architectural feature of Mint is its use of mobile robots to carry wireless network nodes, which can be programmatically controlled through a serial port based API. The space requirement is "miniaturized" by attenuating the radio signals in a controlled fashion. Additionally Mint will also support automated fault injection and analysis testing, remote testbed reconfigurability, and autonomic 24x7 operation. The Mint testbed will enable experimental investigation in a number of research projects, such as, cross layer optimization, optimal routing and transmission scheduling, effective routing cost metrics, resource management for multi-channel mesh networks, energy conservation for sensor networks, scalable geographic-based service provisioning, and modeling mobile low power wireless links. Our final goal is to enable researchers to remotely access Mint over the Internet in order to investigate their wireless protocols in a miniaturized setting.