Realistic network simulation in the UB-ANC aerial vehicle network emulator

Recent advances in rotorcraft design, multi-rotor vehicle control, miniaturization of hardware, sensing, and battery technologies have enabled cheap, practical design of micro air vehicles (MAVs) for civilian and hobby applications. In parallel, several applications are being envisioned that bring together networks of MAVs to accomplish large tasks by coordinating with each other. Despite these advancements, and new FAA rules governing their use, it is still very challenging to experiment with multiple networked MAVs. To address this problem, we are engaged in a multi-year effort to develop an open software/hardware platform called the University at Buffalo's Airborne Networking and Communications testbed (UB-ANC¹), and an associated emulation environment called the UB-ANC Emulator. Our goal is to design, implement, and test MAV networking applications in simulation, and provide seamless transition to deployment. In our prior work on the UB-ANC Emulator, we considered a simple network simulation in which nodes can communicate with each other if they are within a given range. However, this does not accurately reflect the performance of a MAV network where communication links are subject to interference and packet losses, and protocols at the data link, network, and transport layers have a significant influence on network throughput, latency, and reliability. To overcome this limitation, in this paper, we integrate the open-source discrete-event network simulator ns-3 into the UB-ANC Emulator. We demonstrate through link-level and end-to-end measurements how the UB-ANC Emulator can be used to holistically evaluate MAV networking applications with accurate modeling of mobility, control, wireless channel characteristics, and network protocols using ns-3.