A Code-transparent MAC Simulator for WARP

Andreas Schumacher
RWTH Aachen University

The Wireless Access Research Platform (WARP) allows researchers to 
evaluate their developed protocols under real world conditions. This 
hardware platform is built around an FPGA. As is the case with every 
software, the implementation process of the network protocols requires 
debugging steps. Unfortunately, the WARP devices offer only limited 
support, especially in case if time-critical aspects of protocols need 
to be examined.
In this talk we present a framework solving that problem. It enables a 
simulation of the protocol functions that are executed in the processor 
cores of the FPGA. Running these functions in a transparent way avoids 
porting the source code and allows the researcher to study the actual 
implementation in a controllable and reproducible environment. The 
simulation engine further enables performance evaluations of the 
protocol for larger networks, in case more stations are required than 
physically available.