NetTopo: beyond simulator and visualizer for wireless sensor networks

Simulators are needed for testing algorithms of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for large scale scenarios. Deploying real WSN testbed provides a more realistic testing environment, and allows users to get more accurate test results. However, deploying real testbed is highly constrained by the available budget when the test needs a large scale WSN environment. By leveraging the advantages of both simulators and real testbed, an approach that integrates simulation environment and testbed can effectively solve both scalability and accuracy issues. Hence, the simulation of virtual WSN, the visualization of real testbed, and the interaction between simulated WSN and testbed emerge as three key challenges. In this paper, we present NetTopo for providing both simulation and visualization functions to assist the investigation of algorithms in WSNs. Two case studies are described to prove the effectiveness of NetTopo.