Coupling Microscopic Mobility and Mobile Network Emulation for Pedestrian Communication Applications

TL;DR

This paper presents an open-source extension to the CrowNet framework that couples microscopic pedestrian mobility with mobile network emulation in OMNeT++, enabling interaction between simulated and real devices for pedestrian communication scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a modular OMNeT++ extension for coupling pedestrian mobility models with network emulation, facilitating realistic testing of pedestrian communication applications.

Findings

Feasibility demonstrated for small pedestrian groups

Initial timing measurements show acceptable performance

Coupling enables realistic interaction between real and simulated devices

Abstract

Network emulation is a well-established method for demonstrating and testing real devices and mobile apps in a controlled scenario. This paper reports preliminary results for an open-source extension of the CrowNet pedestrian communication framework. It enables the interaction between simulated and real devices using the emulation feature of OMNeT++. The interaction is handled by several OMNeT++ modules that can be combined to match different use-cases. Initial timing measurements have been conducted for an example application which creates decentralized pedestrian density maps based on pedestrian communication. The results indicate that the approach is feasible for scenarios with a limited number of pedestrians. This limitation is mainly due to the real-time simulation requirements in coupled emulation.