Scalable versus Accurate Physical Layer Modeling in Wireless Network Simulations

In wireless networking, due to the high complexity of analytical and theoretical models, simulations are generally considered as the most convenient methodology for performance evaluation. Nonetheless, the physical complexity of the wireless medium induces a clear tradeoff between accuracy and scalability in a wireless network simulator design. In this paper, we focus on this tradeoff and study the impact of physical layer (PHY) modeling accuracy in the computational cost of simulations. We first discuss the main aspects of the wireless medium and briefly show how they have been handled in existing simulators. Then, we introduce a flexible and modular PHY simulation framework to analyze in more details their influence on the scalability of simulations.