Riverbed Technology, Inc.

Opnet Technologies, Inc.

Alejandro Talavera-Martinez

Alain J Cohen

Pradeep Singh

Arun Pasupathy

Ibrahim Utku Moral

Vinod Jeyachandran

Poonam Singh

The embodiments relate to modeling wireless communications in a network. In wireless communications, the nodes share one or more wireless communication channels. When a node has data to transmit, it must contend with the other nodes for access to the wireless communication channel. In the embodiments, the model is configured to simulate the throughput effects of contention including delays caused by retransmissions due to interference and collisions, listen-and-backoff, unavailability of time slots, etc. The occurrence of failed/dropped transmissions due to buffer overflows, excessive retransmission attempts, and unintended collisions are modeled as well. In addition, the embodiments may simulate the effect of mobility by the nodes and the effect of the location of the nodes relative to each other.

Methods and system for modeling wireless communications in a network

Simulation models of media access control and physical layer characteristics facilitate the simulation/emulation of a variety of phenomena that affect transmissions via a wireless media. Such phenomena include media access contention delays, packet drops, and retransmissions that are generally dependent upon changes in transmitter/receiver locations. Each wireless environment is characterized by a model of the communication channel that characterizes transmission effects based on the number of competing transmitters in the environment, which is dynamically determined based on the location of each node in the environment. Additionally, the location of nodes is used to simulate the effects of 'hidden nodes', nodes that are unknown to a transmitting node but can interfere with the reception of transmissions at a receiving node. Each device/node model in the wireless environment preferably accesses the same model of the communication channel, thereby minimizing the amount of detail required at each device model.

Wireless MAC and link-layer simulation modeling

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Rockville, MD, United States of America

Alejandro Talavera-Martinez