Chih-Liang Chou

The design and implementation of the NCTUns 1.0 network simulator

This paper presents the design and implementation of the NCTUns 1.0 network simulator, which is a high-fidelity and extensible network simulator capable of simulating both wired and wireless IP networks. By using an enhanced simulation methodology, a new simulation engine architecture, and a distributed and open-system architecture, the NCTUns 1.0 network simulator is much more powerful than its predecessor--the Harvard network simulator, which was released to the public in 1999. The NCTUns 1.0 network simulator consists of many components. In this paper, we will present the design and implementation of these components and their interactions in detail.

NCTUns tool for wireless vehicular communication network researches

Several goals such as improving road safety and increasing transport efficiency are being pursued in intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Wireless vehicular communication is one technology to achieve these goals. Conducting vehicular experiments on the roads is an approach to studying the effectiveness of wireless vehicular communication. However, such an approach is costly, hard-to-control (repeat), dangerous, and infeasible when many vehicles and people are involved in the field trial. In contrast, the simulation approach does not have these problems. It is a very useful approach and complements the field trial approach. This paper presents NCTUns, an open source integrated simulation platform, for wireless vehicular communication network researches. This tool tightly integrates network and traffic simulations and provides a fast feedback loop between them. Therefore, a simulated vehicle can quickly change its driving behavior such as moving speed and direction when it receives a message from the wireless vehicular communication network. This capability is required by several novel ITS applications such as active collision avoidance systems. In this paper, we present the design, implementation, validation, and performance of this tool.

EstiNet openflow network simulator and emulator

In this article, we introduce the EstiNet OpenFlow network simulator and emulator, and present its support for testing the functions and evaluating the performances of software-defined networks¿ OpenFlow controller¿s application programs. EstiNet uses an unique kernel reentering simulation methodology to enable unmodified real applications to run on nodes in its simulated network. As a result, without any modification, real NOX/POX or Floodlight OpenFlow controllers can readily run on a host in an EstiNet simulated network to control thousands of simulated OpenFlow switches. EstiNet has the characteristics of a simulator and an emulator at the same time. It combines the advantages of the simulation and emulation approaches without their respective shortcomings. EstiNet uses real OpenFlow controller programs, real network application programs, and the real TCP/IP protocol stack in the Linux kernel to generate correct, accurate, and repeatable SDN application performance results. In this article, we compare EstiNet with ns-3 and Mininet regarding their capabilities, performance, and scalability.

NCTUns 4.0: An Integrated Simulation Platform for Vehicular Traffic, Communication, and Network Researches

In this paper, we present an integrated simulation platform, called NCTUns, for vehicular traffic, communication, and network researches. This platform combines the capabilities supported by a network simulator and those supported by a traffic simulator. With these simulation capabilities, NCTUns can be used to design protocols for intelligent transportation systems (ITS) communication networks such as a wireless vehicular communication network. Besides, the novel architecture of the platform enables the real-world Linux protocol stack and any real-world application to be used in simulations of such networks. In this paper, we present the design of NCTUns for supporting ITS researches and show its scalability.

A Practical Routing Protocol for Vehicle-formed Mobile Ad Hoc Networks on the Roads

An IVC (Inter-vehicle communication) network is a type of mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) in which high-speed vehicles send, receive, and forward packets via other vehicles on the roads. An IVC network can provide useful applications in future Intelligent Transportation Systems. However, due to frequent network topology changes, a routing path in an IVC network breaks easily. As such, a routing protocol proposed for general MANET (e.g., AODV) performs poorly in IVC networks. To address this problem, we designed and implemented an intelligent flooding-based routing protocol and conducted several field trials to evaluate its performance on the roads. Results obtained from field trials show that (1) our protocol outperforms AODV significantly on IVC networks, and (2) our protocol can make many useful services such as email, ftp, web, video conferencing, and video broadcasting applicable on IVC networks for vehicle users.

The design and implementation of the NCTUns network simulation engine

Abstract NCTUns is a network simulator running on Linux. It has several unique advantages over traditional network simulators. This paper presents the novel design and implementation of its simulation engine. This paper focuses on how to combine the kernel re-entering and discrete-event simulation methodologies to execute simulations quickly. The performance and scalability of NCTUns are also presented and discussed.

Improving the Channel Utilization of IEEE 802.11p/1609 Networks

The IEEE 802.11p/1609 standards specify a suite of communication protocols for vehicular communication networks. A new operational mode, called theWAVE (Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments) mode, is defined to enable communication among high-speed vehicles or between a vehicle and a roadside infrastructure network. In the WAVE mode, a mobile/stationary station uses a combined FDMA/TDMA channel access scheme to switch its channel between the control channel and a service channel every 50 ms. The primary purpose of this design is to detect new services announced by other stations. However, if a station would like to use all of its service channel bandwidth to transmit a large volume of data to another station, switching back to the control channel every 50 ms without doing anything useful only unnecessarily reduces the maximum possible transmission throughput by a half. To overcome this problem, in this paper we propose an improved channel access scheme to allow a station to stay on a service channel as long as it requires before returning to the control channel. Our simulation results show that the proposed scheme significantly improves the service channel utilization under various network conditions.

Evaluating and improving the TCP/UDP performances of IEEE 802.11(p)/1609 networks

The IEEE 802.11(p)/1609 standard is an emerging technology for vehicular communication networks. It amends the IEEE 802.11-2007 standard and defines a new WAVE operational mode for vehicular environments. The WAVE mode utilizes a combined FDMA/TDMA scheme to manage network bandwidth. In this mode, a node must periodically switch its frequency channel between two different channels over time. Such a design may result in bandwidth wastage due to the residual time caused by channel switching. In this paper, we propose two easy-to-implement schemes to mitigate this problem and compare their TCP/UDP performances with those of the original scheme. Our simulation results provide many insights into the operations of these schemes on IEEE 802.11(p)/1609 networks and show that the proposed schemes always outperform the original scheme.

NCTUns 5.0 Network Simulator for Advanced Wireless Vehicular Network Researches

NCTUns is a high-fidelity network simulator and emulator. By using a novel kernel re-entering simulation methodology, it provides many unique advantages over traditional network simulators and emulators. For this reason, since its public release on November 1, 2002, as of February 2, 2009, more than 13,838 people from 130 countries in the world have registered at its web site to download it and these numbers are still fast increasing. NCTUns is open-source and runs on Linux. It can simulate many different types of networks. In this paper, we will present its supports for wireless vehicular network researches. In particular, it supports IEEE 802.11(p)/1609 standards, which are proposed for wireless vehicular networks. More information about this tool is available at its web site at (http://NSL.csie.nctu.edu.tw/nctuns.html).

On striping traffic over multiple IEEE 802.11(b) wireless channels

Due to interference, path loss, multipath fading, background noise, and many other factors, wireless communication normally cannot provide a wireless link with both a high data rate and a long transmission range. To address this problem, striping network traffic in parallel over multiple lower-data-rate but longer-transmission-range wireless channels may be used. In this paper, we propose a new striping method and evaluate its performances over multiple IEEE 802.11(b) channels under various conditions. Our extensive simulation results show that this method is quite effective for such an application.