Automatic configuration of controlled interference experiments in sensornet testbeds

Abstract

Experiments under controlled radio interference are crucial to assess the robustness of low-power wireless protocols. While tools such as JamLab augment existing sensornet testbeds with realistic interference, it remains an error-prone and time-consuming task to manually select the set of nodes acting as jammers and their individual transmit powers. We present an automated configuration approach based on simulated annealing to overcome this problem. A preliminary evaluation based on two testbeds shows that our approach can find near-optimal solutions within at most a few hours. We believe our approach can facilitate the widespread adoption of controlled interference experiments by the sensornet community.