Experimentation and at-sea testing of underwater network protcols via software reuse from ns2-Miracle network simulations. A case of study using WHOI Micromodems

The goal of this thesis is to create a C++ module to interface the ns2/NS-Miracle network simulator with the Micromodem developed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI Micromodem). From the network simulator's point of view, the implemented module acts like a common physical layer, but, rather than to be connected to a simulated channel, it opens a serial connection between the machine running ns2 and the Micromodem. Then, the modem transmits acoustically the packet over the real underwater channel. In collaboration with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), a leader in the field of underwater technology, we created a network testbench composed of seven easy deployable nodes. These nodes are intended to be used for a wide range of applications thanks to their multi purpose configuration: the embedded system is composed by a Gumstix board running Emdebian and it is possible to access each single node of the network through a WiFi SSH connection in order to schedule tests, launch programs and collect results