A Java Application for Modeling and Simulating Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks

In this chapter, we introduce MOTION (MOdeling and simulaTIng mObile ad-hoc Networks), a Java application in which the behavior of MANETs is modeled by means of an Abstract State Machine representation [21], and then simulated with the simulation engine ASMETA [22]. This approach is similar to [17], in which Colored Petri Nets are used to model the AODV routing protocol (Ad-hoc On-demand Distance Vector), and CPN model is used to simulates the MANET behavior. As an improvement, our approach is more general purpose, meaning that the implementation of the routing protocol is only one of the several services that can be modeled in our layered framework and implemented in the simulator. Thanks to the structured approach, services can be easily added, removed and replaced by changing some transitions and nested nets, as well as changing classes in software implementation. The ASM approach also provides a way to describe algorithms in a simple abstract pseudo-code, which can be translated into a high-level programming language source code [21]. Finally, from the implementation point of view, the capability of translating formal specifications into executable code, in order to carry out simulations of the models, is provided by tools like CoreASM [23] and ASMETA [22].