Characterization of WiFi Modules Using an Open-Source Network Simulator

Wireless local area networks (WLAN) has grown rapidly and have been used extensively as a wireless access technology in a wide range of application domain and verticals. This rapid growth results in a plethora of solutions in all levels of a wireless stack, making the evaluation of the optimum solution, in a real network deployment time consuming, costly, and ineffective. In such cases, network simulators, come into play providing a wide range of models for evaluating network deployments and configurations under different scenarios. This comprises a critical challenge for researchers, regarding which model(s) to utilize for each scenario. In this paper, we present a holistic approach to characterize various auxiliary and Wi-Fi models exposed by NS3 network simulator, and their applicability on different use cases / environments.