An Energy-Aware Co-Simulation Framework for the Design of Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper we present an energy-aware framework for the design of wireless sensor networks, based on a ISS-centric (Instruction Set Simulator) hardware-software network-aware co-simulation strategy. The following contributions makes the proposed framework one step ahead the state of the art WSN simulation environments: i) it supports energy awareness without sacrificing simulation speed and scalability; ii) it allows to run real software that can be easily ported on real-life nodes; iii) it provides a standard and modular interface with hardware components to maximize reusability. The capabilities of the simulation framework have been stressed by comparing different power management strategies, exploring their power-performance trade-offs and their effectiveness in various network conditions