DESERT Underwater: An NS-Miracle-based framework to design, simulate, emulate and realize test-beds for underwater network protocols

TLDR

DESERT Underwater is a public C/C++ library suite that supports the design and implementation of underwater network protocols, created to extend research beyond simulations and enable reliable communication among heterogeneous underwater nodes. This paper presents the rationale for the framework and provides a concise description of the existing DESERT Underwater libraries. The framework allows simulation code to be reused directly for building underwater network prototypes, facilitating rapid development. Preliminary tests demonstrate the feasibility of the approach and indicate that DESERT Underwater is a valuable tool for developing and testing real‑world underwater network applications.

Abstract

DESERT Underwater (short for DEsign, Simulate, Emulate and Realize Test-beds for Underwater network protocols) is a complete set of public C/C++ libraries to support the design and implementation of underwater network protocols. Its creation stems from the will to push the studies on underwater networking beyond simulations. Implementing research solutions on actual devices, in fact, is of key importance to realize a communication and networking architecture that allows heterogeneous nodes to communicate reliably in the underwater environment. In this paper, we first discuss the rationale behind this work, and, then we list and briefly describe all the DESERT Underwater libraries currently implemented. In line with the current trends in underwater networking, our approach makes it possible to reuse the same code prepared for simulations in order to realize underwater network prototypes. We also present some preliminary tests that confirm the feasibility of the proposed solution for the design and evaluation of underwater network protocols. In this perspective, we believe that DESERT Underwater is a useful tool to profitably develop and test real world applications.