Hardware-in-the-Loop Emulation of Mobile Wireless Communication Environments

To address the difficulties in developing routing protocols and software applications for mobile, wireless environments, Architecture Technology Corporation developed a hardware-in-the-loop emulator known as ABSNE that creates a controllable, repeatable, virtual network environment. Using ABSNE, end-system software and hardware in a stationary, wired test bed can be evaluated as though it were in an operational mobile, wireless environment. This paper presents the need for ABSNE as well as the emulator's design and lessons learned from using ABNSE to develop an ad hoc routing protocol and a peer-to-peer information dissemination platform.