Thorough IoT testbed characterization: From proof-of-concept to repeatable experimentations

In this paper, we explore the role of simulators and testbeds in the development procedure of protocols or applications for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and Internet of Things (IoT). We investigate the complementarity between simulation and experimentation studies by evaluating latest features available among open testbeds (e.g., energy monitoring, mobility). We show that monitoring tools and control channels of testbeds allow for identification of crucial issues (e.g., energy consumption, link quality) and we identify some opportunities to leverage those real-life obstacles. In this context, we insist on how simulations and experimentations can be efficiently and successfully coupled with each other in order to obtain reproducible scientific results, rather than sole proofs-of-concept. Indeed, we especially highlight the main characteristics of such evaluation tools that allow to run multiple instances of a same experimental setup over stable and finely controlled components of hardware and real-world environment. For our experiments, we used and evaluated the FIT IoT-LAB facility. Our results show that such open platforms, can guarantee a certain stability of hardware and environment components over time, thus, turning the unexpected failures and changing parameters into core experimental parameters and valuable inputs for enhanced performance evaluation.