EXtensible Animator for Mobile Simulations

[Nikos Livathinos]

Hello NS-2 community,

I am glad to announce the availability of the EXtensible Animator for
Mobile Simulations (EXAMS). EXAMS is a visualization tool for wireless
NS-2 simulations.


EXAMS is an open source project available online at:

http://www.livathinos.gr/EXAMS_overview.aspx


EXAMS’ goal is to help the researcher understand the mobile routing
protocol with an exact visual representation of the NS-2 simulation
outcome, while at the same time enabling him to control the animation
process. It can visualize network layout, animate mobile nodes’ movements,
playback packets exchange at routing and agent level, give user the
ability to freely move forward and backwards in simulation time and depict
the network partitions according to given radio range. As regards data
transmissions EXAMS can portray source and destination address, network
level (routing or agent), direction, flow sequence and other. Moreover
EXAMS keeps detailed statistics about data being sent, received, forwarded
or dropped on a node and network basis

EXAMS has been designed with the protocol developer in mind and provides a
complete environment to study, test and debug wireless network protocols.
Its unique characteristic is its extensible architecture which makes it
possible to visualize network protocol’s internal data structures like
routing tables, values for protocol’s state variables, protocol specific
packet types - in fact anything inside the trace file. Technically this is
achievable through protocol extensions which are developed by the protocol
designer himself and are responsible to visualize protocol’s data
according to its own semantics. Additionally the visual environment of
EXAMS incorporates many user friendly features like:

 - Fast jump to a specific line of the trace file.
 - Zoom in/out capability.
 - Filtering of network traffic according to routing and/or agent layer.
 - Screenshots capture to external image file.
 - Color and shape codes for data transmission.
 - Extensive usage of keyboard shortcuts.


Yours faithfully,


Nikos Livathinos


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MSc, Livathinos Nikolaos,
Computer and Informatics Engineer.

Web: www.livathinos.gr
Email: nikos@...
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