Brief announcement: a platform for experimenting with mobile algorithms in a laboratory

ABSTRACT

In this work, we present a platform for testing algorithms on mobile systems. We advocate that the interest of the platform lies in many aspects: it shows that simulators are not accurate, especially with regards to wireless communication and delays assumptions. Such a platform can be used to refine simulators assumptions. Moreover, to the best of our knowledge, our platform is the first attempt to implement mobility patterns, that permit to test multiple distributed algorithms in the same movement configuration, allowing for reproducible experiments. Last, but not least, we want to open our platform to test other distributed and mobile algorithms, with the hope that it will open new problems and pose new challenges.

REFERENCES

• 1: David Cavin , Yoav Sasson , André Schiper, On the accuracy of MANET simulators, Proceedings of the second ACM international workshop on Principles of mobile computing, October 30-31, 2002, Toulouse, France [doi>10.1145/584490.584499]
• 2: G. Chockler, M. Demirbas, S. Gilbert, N. A. Lynch, C. Newport, and T. Nolte. Consensus and collision detectors in radio networks. Distributed Computing, pages 55--84, June 2008.
• 3: Shlomi Dolev , Seth Gilbert , Nancy A. Lynch , Alexander A. Shvartsman , Jennifer L. Welch, GeoQuorums: implementing atomic memory in mobile ad hoc networks, Distributed Computing, v.18 n.2, p.125-155, December 2005 [doi>10.1007/s00446-005-0140-9]
• 4: M.-O. Killijian, M. Roy, G. Séverac, and C. Zanon. Data backup for mobile nodes : a cooperative middleware and experimentation platform. In DSN 2009 Workshop on Architecting Dependable Systems (WADS). To appear, 2009.
• 5: Matthieu Roy , François Bonnet , Leonardo Querzoni , Silvia Bonomi , Marc-Olivier Killijian , David Powell, Geo-registers: An Abstraction for Spatial-Based Distributed Computing, Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems, December 15-18, 2008, Luxor, Egypt [doi>10.1007/978-3-540-92221-6_34]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.4 Distributed Systems
          Subjects: Distributed applications

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.5 Testing and Debugging
          Subjects: Distributed debugging

General Terms:
Algorithms, Experimentation

Keywords:
algorithms, experimental platform, mobile systems, reliability, testing