Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have earned an upsurging inquisitiveness of the research community over the past decade and for the upcoming era, due to which we can realize its countless applications in various fields including medical, military, environment and academia. Wireless sensor networks composed of thousands or sometimes millions of sensor nodes which are usually operated by batteries that have limited energy, data processing, storage and transmission capacity. Moreover, these sensor nodes are densely deployed in human inaccessible regions and connected through error prone wireless links to offer a long coverage, therefore It is very difficult rather impractical to analyze the behavior of WSNs with real experiments. Most researches in this particular field are carried out by using simulation tools in several educational associations and research hubs. For this reason study of existing experimental tools for analyzing the behavior of WSNs becomes essential. This paper is intended to present a review on experimental tools and techniques available in the literature for WSNs, including simulators, emulators and test beds. These tools are highly useful for analyzing the operational behavior of wireless sensor networks. This paper also provides a roadmap for selecting appropriate experimental tools for various kinds of WSNs and its applications by taking into account their capabilities, relative ease of use and accuracy.
Editorial: Simulation Tools and Techniques for Communications and Networking
