Distributed Multi-Level Simulation of Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract:
True autonomy of wireless sensor systems depends on their reliable operation for extended times without human intervention. Since the growing power demand of feature-rich applications cannot be satisfied only by improvements in battery technology this leads to the need of lean low-power system designs. A novel holistic approach for system simulation of ultra-low power wireless sensor networks is discussed. Focus of this paper is distributed modeling of instruction-accurate simulation components relevant to early power estimations and power profiling of new wireless sensor node designs both on node and network level. The use of adaptive multi-threading leads to considerable hard- and software co-simulation speedup, especially when simulating dynamic environments.