A framework for remote automation, configuration, and monitoring of real-world experiments

Abstract

The evaluation of wireless and mobile communication systems in real-world testbeds can be cumbersome and tedious. Experiments require manual intervention to coordinate the execution of involved programs and to collect test results on each involved device. Moreover, the collection of test results from protocols is difficult due to operating system restrictions. In contrast, simulation offers the ability to easily log such information and automate whole experiments. Realtestbeds should offer the same flexibility and convenience to automate whole experiments and to collect test results as in simulation. In this paper, we propose a framework that effectively addresses this challenge. Moreover, with the integration of the cross-layer architecture Crawler, we demonstrate that we are able to automate experiments where crosslayer optimizations are involved and while experimenting we centrally monitor and log parameters across protocol layers on different devices.