Use MiXiM for different communication technologies

[hup...@gmail.com]

I am posting this question to the omnet++ mailing list as the mixim website says:

"For questions and support-requests please use the OMNeT++ mailing list."

I want to replicate the scenario given in the "vision" paper of the original mixim authors. There, in section 4.2.2 it says:

"... it is possible to have multiple connection managers in MiXiM. This enables the simulation of different orthogonal spectrum ranges... "

and

"...it is also possible to have hybrid nodes, i.e. nodes having both a GSM and a WLAN NIC. It is the responsibility of the NIC (and not the node) to register with the desired connection manager."

Figure 1 shows the ConnectionManagers for wifi and gsm:



How to extend mixim [ver 2.3] to supports many comm. technologies & which parts of the code havee to be modified?

[Rudolf Hornig]

If you start working on a new project I *strongly* suggest to use INET 3.x instead of MiXiM. MiXiM is no longer maintained and as you have probably figured out the original developers are no longer around. Almost all functionality that was once in MiXiM has been merged into INET (+ a lot more). A brand new PHY layer architecture was introduced that allows even bit level accurate simulations. Energy management, physical environment modeling etc.

I would look into the latest INET sources, especially the physicalLayer and see what's there. Take a look also at the wireless tutorial in the tutorial/wireless folder which can give you a high level overview and some starting examples.

As for your actual question. The thing that was ConnectionManager in MiXiM is now called RadioMedium in INET and represents the physical medium through the transmissions propagate. Like in the MiXiM vision paper, you can configure more than one radio medium in a simulation. By default INET expects that you call the it to "radioMedium" and it's present on the top level of the network, but you can drop additional modules with different name like gsmRadioMedium. In this case you have to configure which actual Radios will use this module. The radios can be configured using Radio.radioMediumType parameter which should be set to "gsmRadioMedium" for those radios that use this medium.

This way the two medium works independently from each other. They can transmit data without affecting each other. 

[hup...@gmail.com]

Hello Rudolf,

Thanks a lot for the descriptive response. I will have a look at the mentioned resources and try to figure out how to start a project from scratch. One more additional question, is there any material (paper, documentation, or similar) for INET similar to the MiXiM paper which explains the relation between the different modules in the Physical Layer?

Regards,

[Rudolf Hornig]

You may find the INET draft manual helpful. https://omnetpp.org/doc/inet/api-current/inet-manual-draft.pdf

The physical model is in a bit better shape than the rest of the manual :(

Rudolf