[Discuss-gnuradio] Combining gr-IEEE802.11 with NS2/NS3 For Simulations

[Garver, Paul W]

Hey all,

I’m looking at doing some IEEE 802.11g simulations for my research and I’d like to solicit your opinion as to the best approach. Essentially, I think I have a method of improving localization accuracy combining TDoA with some information from the MAC Layer. I’d like to simulate my idea in more fidelity than MATLAB. By this, I mean creating nodes which actually implement at least the PHY and MAC OSI Layers of the stack. gr-IEEE802.11 [1] has some nice support for the PHY layer, but critical MAC layer features such as CSMA/CA are not implemented. I also want to simulate particular frame exchange sequences such as RTS/CTS. NS2/NS3 [2] appears to have support for many of the higher layer functions (e.g. MAC), but it’s unclear to me how much you can play around and access the PHY Layer. I’m not very familiar with NS/NS3 in general. I need very precise (sub-sample level) information on packet arrival times, etc. 

I’m wondering if I could combine the accessibility of the PHY layer in GNURadio with the MAC-Layer implementations in NS2/NS3. Basically, the idea is to let GR be the “modem” for NS2/NS3, and then try and combine the NS2/NS3 results with some output from the GR simulations (e.g. time of arrival of particular packets) to get what I want.

Has anyone tried this? I appreciate your advice regarding the easiest path here...

Thanks,

PWG

[1] https://github.com/bastibl/gr-ieee802-11

[2] https://www.nsnam.org/