Towards a taxonomy of simulation tools for wireless sensor networks

Many limitations (e.g. complexity, cost, scalability and capability) make the analytical methods and physical testbeds improper to evaluate the performances of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Simulations can provide a good approximation at lower cost and in less time. Hence, a number of simulation tools for WSN have been developed in the past few years. However, different tools may emphasize on different features. For example, besides the general network simulators, some SystemC-based simulators have been developed recently in order to realize the hardware/software (HW/SW) co-design of the node at the system-level that also takes into account its network performances. So it is necessary to study the existing WSN simulators and to distinguish their different features. In this paper, we propose a taxonomy that categorizes the existing simulation tools into four classes according to their modeling methodologies and their target applications. In order to prove that the proposed taxonomy is reasonable and comprehensive, we use it to make a survey of the existing simulation tools. This study is intended to be broad enough to cover all the important existing simulation tools. The goal of this paper is to analyze the WSN simulation tools and help the WSN designers find an appropriate simulator