Lure: A simulator for networks of batteryless intermittent nodes

The emerging paradigm of batteryless intermittent sensor networks (BISNs) presents new challenges for researchers of low-power wireless systems and protocols. The nature of these challenges exacerbates the difficulty of evaluating networks of physical sensor nodes, making simulation an even more important component in evaluating performance metrics, such as communication throughput and delay, for BISN designs. To our knowledge, existing simulators and analytical models do not meet the unique needs of BISN research; therefore, we have created a new open-source BISN simulator named Lure. Lure is designed from the ground-up for simulation of batteryless intermittent systems and networks. Written in Python, Lure is powerful, flexible, highly configurable, and supports rapid prototyping of new protocols, systems, and applications, with a low learning curve. In this paper, we present Lure and validate it with experimental data to show that Lure can accurately reflect the reality of BISNs. We then demonstrate the process of applying Lure to research questions in select case studies.