Building a User-level Toolkit for Multihop Wireless Networks 

ABSTRACT:

The development of a more efficient transport protocol for multihop wireless networks has undergone intensive research. The unique characteristics of multihop wireless networks cause severe TCP performance degradation, which hinders widespread commercial applications of this promising technology. So far, simulations have been used extensively as the major evaluation method for wireless transport protocols due to its simplicity. However, it's been demonstrated that there may be significant differences between simulation results and real world performance because of the complexity of modeling wireless signals. Few measurement studies have been performed in this area because implementing a new transport protocol typically requires kernel development expertise. To facilitate the development of new wireless transport protocols and provide a more realistic evaluation of existing ones, we propose to build a user-level toolkit (WiFu) for multihop wireless networks. The toolkit resides in user space and greatly simplifies the protocol development process. Additionally, with a modular architecture, it can easily incorporate a wide range of transport protocols for multihop wireless networks. Developing this toolkit as an open source project will encourage contributions from the research community and benefit educational use.