Network Simulation Theory

In-class Project - Part 03

Evaluating the Performance of a Simple IoT System
(25 points)
Prof. Dr. Anna Förster
Dr. Asanga Udugama
Thenuka Karunathilake
Akhil Simha Neela
Submission deadline: 31st of January, 2023, 10 am.
Submission ONLY via Stud.IP (DoIT)

By submitting this assignment via my personal login to Stud.IP, I assure, that this work has been done
solely by me without any further help from others except for the official attendance by the teaching staff of
the Chair of Sustainable Communication Networks.

What to submit under DoIT:

1. Short report in PDF. No other formats are allowed!
2. ZIP file of the complete project, including the .ini files used. Do not upload the INET model framework!

In this in-class assignment, as in the previous assignments, you are required to find answers to research questions.
The scenario of this assignment is similar to "In-class Project - Part 01 but uses the INET model
framework to build and simulate communication networks. Since the focus is on communication
networks, the original scenario is reused, but certain aspects have been left out.

Scenario
A family has deployed a heating system to heat a 5-room house. Each room is deployed with a Heater and
a central Controller regulates the temperature of each room. The occupants set a prefered temperature to
maintain in each room using the Controller. The Heaters are periodically informed of the prefered temperature
by the Controller. Every Heater computes the energy used to heat their deployed room periodically and reports
the value to the Controller.
Create a network using the INET model framework of OMNeT++ to model the behaviour of the above heating
system. Figure 1 shows the components of the heating system. The Heaters (in rooms) are connected over
wireless networking using IEEE 802.15.4.

Research Questions
The family has found the response time of reacting to preferred temperature changes are poor. Additionally, the
family has found a currently unused feature in Heaters that is able to send useful information, i.e., temperature,
humidity, air quality and lighting conditions. All these are configurable options in the Heating system and the
family wishes to reconfigure. The following table provides the possible options and current settings (in bold).

Direction Type of Message Frequencies (sec) Message Sizes (bytes)

Controller to Heater Preferred temperature 60, 30, 15, 1 10
Heater to Controller Energy used 3600 10
Basic information level 60, 30, 15, 1 20
Medium information level 60, 30, 15, 1 50
All information level 60, 30, 15, 1 102

1
 Figure 1: The network of models to simulate a heating system deployed in a house

The research questions listed below attempt to answer the performance issues that might arise from the recon-
figuration. You are required to identify hypotheses based on the research questions, run simulations and find
answers to prove or disprove your hypothese. Always consider a 7-day evaluation period.
1. What would be an optimal message frequency to configure without using information levels?
(9 points)
2. What would be an optimal message frequency and information level to configure? (9 points)

Modeling Details
You must include a statistical analysis to justify your answers. Use the techniques explained in Statistical
Evaluation of Simulation Campaigns lectures and produced statistics in simulations to perform the statistical
analysis. Similarly, justify the values used for different parameters. Here are the some general information and
the important elements that must be present in the extended models. The marking considers the presence of
these elements in your models.

Communication Protocols The Heating system uses IEEE 802.15.4 as the link layer (wireless technology),
the Internet Protocol (IP) as the network layer and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) as the transport
layer.

Building the Network You are required to use INET to build the network. The network uses IEEE
802.15.4 based wireless SensorNodes as the Heaters and Controller. Use the example given in the show-
case at inet4/showcases/wireless/ieee802154 of INET to build your network. (2 points)

Modeling Temperature and Energy Usage You are required neither to model the changes of the tem-
perature as in the previous in-class assignments nor compute energy usage. But messages have to be exchanged
between the Heaters and the Controller.

Message Exchanges and Application Configuration The UDP based communications are enabled by
deploying UdpBasicApp and UdpSink applications, the former to send messages and the latter, to receive
messages. The following applications are currently configured in the Heating system. (3 points)

Node Application Purpose

Controller UdpBasicApp Send preferred temperature
UdpSink Receive energy usage
Heater UdpBasicApp Send energy usage
UdpSink Receive preferred temperature

Wireless Communications In INET, to handle the operations of any wireless technology, a Radio Medium
must be configured. IEEE 802.15.4 uses the Ieee802154NarrowbandScalarRadioMedium to model the
radio medium. (1 point)

2
IP Address Configurations In INET, to auto assign IP addresses for communications, a Configurator
model must be configured. For IP version 4, this is done by the Ipv4NetworkConfigurator model. (1 point)