WLAN simulator

Abstract

Since wireless network becomes popular, we can observe that many new WLAN protocol designs have proposed and published, but lacks of simulation tools are developed for WLAN. On the other hand, implementing new protocols on existing wireless devices is a difficult task to many students and application developers because it always requires modifying the device drivers. Developers must familiar with many technical knowledge like threading, architecture of OS, I/O flow, etc. Besides, manufacturers don’t intend to provide their source codes to the public. So, a WLAN simulator is developed to provide a wireless-like environment for developers implementing and testing their new protocols. It is written in popular programming language (Java) based on third parity libraries. It aims to make developers realize that modifying device drivers can be as simple as writing applications. It can also tackle difficulties on capturing wireless traffic and carrying out wireless experiments. A few experiments will be performed to demonstrate how to use the simulator and show how it helps to simplify the development works. Based on the work of this project, a paper entitled “A WLAN Simulator Based on DLSim Library” will be submitted to IEEE software magazine for possible publication.