Simulate Random MAC Protocol in NS2 (Part II)

In previous post, we wrote an NS2 simulation program that fits the project specification, except that we're using the standard 802.11 MAC protocol. In this post, we'll discuss how to add our own MAC protocol to NS2.

Compile NS2 from Source

To add an new protocol to NS2, we actually need to download the whole NS2 source tree and add some extra CPP files there, which is embarrassingly inconvenient. But for now, we have to live with it.

Anyways, download the NS2 all-in-one package from here, put the tarball somewhere in your home, say ~/projects/, then extract it.

cd ~/projects
tar xvf ns2-allinone-2.35.tar.gz
cd ns2-allinone-2.35
./install

The install script will only generate the binaries in current directory, and will NOT actually copy them to anywhere. After the compilation is done, you'll will find the ns executable in the ns-2.35 subdirectory.

Suppose you put your project files (e.g., the TCL file we wrote) in ~/projects/network/ns2, then it's convenient to have an symbol link to the ns binary. 

cd ~/projects/network/ns2
ln -svf ~/projects/ns2-allinone-2.35/ns-2.35/ns myns

The you'll have an symbol link called myns, which points the actual executable. Then you can run your simulation this way.

myns random_mac.tcl

In which the random_mac.tcl is the TCL file we wrote in last post.

Add a New Mac Protocol

To add a new MAC protocol, say RMAC, we need to do the following. Suppose you're in the ns2-allinone-2.35/ns-2.35 directory.

  • Create rmac.cc and rmac.h file in the mac subdirectory, for now, just leave them empty.

  • Edit Makefile, find the line contains mac/smac.o (around line 249), add one line like this

    .....
    mac/mac-802_3.o mac/mac-tdma.o mac/smac.o \
    mac/rmac.o\
    .....

So now, when you do make inside the ns-2.35 directory, our source file rmac.cc and rmac.h will be compiled. Of course, at this point, there is no content at those two files, which we'll add later.

Adapt the SimpleMac Protocol

The NS2 source contains a simple MAC protocol called SimpleMac, which is a good start point for us to adapt.

Just copy all the contents in mac/mac-simple.h to mac/rmac.h, and mac/mac-simple.cc to mac/rmac.cc. Then change Mac/Simple to Mac/RMAC line 60 of the rmac.cc file. You should be able to compile using the make command in ns-2.35 directory.

If everything is OK, go back to the project directory ~/projects/network/ns2, change the MAC protocol to Mac/RMAC (previously Mac/802.11), you should be able to run the simulation using myns, which points to the ns binary we just compiled.