A Visualisation Tool for Ad Hoc Networks - ViTAN
Frank H. P. Fitzek, Patrick Seeling, Martin Reisslein, R. Rugin, Michele Zorzi · 2004
The Visualization Tool for Ad Hoc Networks --- ViTAN is a tool for visualizing the connectivities and link qualities (capacities) between the terminals in wireless ad hoc networks. The ViTAN tool takes the location of the wireless terminals (specified by Cartesian coordinates) and the link qualities between the terminals as input. The tool produces a visualization of the graph of the terminals' connectivities in the fig format, which in turn can be converted to any common graphic format. ViTAN does not evaluate the connectivities and link qualities in ad hoc networks. Instead, ViTAN takes the link qualities obtained from other tools, simulations, or analytical evaluations as input and graphically visualizes these link qualities and the resulting connectivities in the network. For the information exchange between ViTAN and other tools a simple interface is provided. By this separation ViTAN can be utilized for a wide range of applications, focusing on its strengths in visualization. ViTAN facilitates the visual study of complex ad hoc networks by depicting higher link qualities with thicker edges and in darker gray shades. In addition, ViTAN draws the edges at different depth levels of the fig format depending on the corresponding link quality. This feature enables the selective display and visual study of the connectivities provided by links with a specific quality range. ViTAN is an open source project and therefore the source code and a detailed documentation is publicly available. We explain the benefits of ViTAN by showing its use in the examination of a CDMA and an IEEE802.11a based ad hoc network.