On the Accuracy of OMNeT plus plus in the Wireless Sensor Networks Domain: Simulation vs. Testbed

In this paper we present a first effort in assessing the reliability of OMNeT++ and the MAC Simulator framework in simulating Wireless Sensor Networks. A collection of metrics on the flooding algorithm running on a simple testbed made of few Tmote Sky is used as reference to evaluate the quality of the simulation results. Our experiments show that simulation results tend to over-estimate the metrics, collected in the testbed. A correcting factor derived from experimental evidences must be considered in order to improve the simulation results. At the best of our knowledge, this is the first result about the accuracy of OMNet++ in the wireless sensor network domain.