A visualization and analysis tool for NS-2 wireless simulations: iNSpect

The network simulator 2 (NS-2) is a popular and powerful simulation environment, and the number of NS-2 users has increased greatly in recent years. Although it was originally designed for wired networks, NS-2 has been extended to work with wireless networks, including wireless LANs, mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), and sensor networks; however, the network animator (NAM) for NS-2 has not been extended for wireless visualization. In this paper, we discuss a new visualization and analysis tool for use with NS-2 wireless simulations. Visual analysis of a wireless environment is important for three areas of NS-2 based simulation research: (1) validating the accuracy of a mobility model's output and/or the node topology files used to drive the simulation; (2) validation of new versions of the NS-2 simulator itself; and-(3) analysis of the results of NS-2 simulations. Our iNSpect program handles all three of these areas quickly and accurately. We've made our iNSpect program available for other researchers in order to improve the accuracy of their simulations.