MagicWeaver: An Agent-Based Simulation Framework for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Distributed sensor networks have been the focus of considerable research during the past few years. Current research on wireless sensor networks can involve a number of issues, including hardware constraints, communication and routing issues, data management problems, and software engineering principles. To clearly understand their characteristics, we require development environments to design them, explore architectural alternatives, and simulate their performance. MagicWeaver is an agent-based simulation framework for wireless sensor networks. It provides abstract models for sensor tasking and communication, device constraints, network topologies and the physical environment. It also supports a special class of applications characterized by streaming data-feeds. MagicWeaver illustrates ways in which agents paradigm extends it`s flexibility to incorporate teamwork and coordination between sensor agents. In this paper we discuss MagicWeaver`s underlying design rationale and provide it`s current implementation status. We also report on results obtained while performing scalability tests using the JADE agent platform.