A Mobile Platform for Measurements in Dynamic Topology Wireless Networks

Due to the wide spread of mobile devices, such as smartphones, nowadays new applications and appealing services are emerging for wireless networks. Some interesting novel architectures for communication inspired by principles of cooperation have been introduced in the last years. To evaluate the performance of new proposed architectures, it is often necessary to measure throughput and delay in the communication, and the power consumption of the devices. In many measurement campaigns, mobile devices are placed in fixed positions without moving around, and consequently the results differ from reality, where the topology of the network is constantly changing due to mobility of the users. Another approach is to make simulations where the topology of the network can be modified during the measurements, but in some cases they can only offer a good approximation of the real environment. In this chapter, we present a mobile platform we have designed to optimize measurements for wireless networks with dynamic topologies by using real devices.