GrADyS-SIM -- A OMNET++/INET simulation framework for Internet of Flying things
This provides a tool for researchers and developers in the Internet of Flying Things domain to test and verify UAV swarm coordination and communication protocols, though it is incremental as it builds on existing simulation libraries.
The authors tackled the problem of simulating cooperating UAV swarms for joint missions by developing GrADyS-SIM, a framework that uses OMNeT++/INET to simulate communication, coordination, and context-awareness protocols, enabling testing of new protocols and configurations.
This technical report describes GrADyS-SIM, a framework for simulating cooperating swarms of UAVs in joint mission in hypothetical landscape and communicating through RF radios. The framework was created to aid and verify the communication, coordination and context-awareness protocols being developed in the GrADyS project. GrADyS-SIM uses the OMNeT++ simulation library and its INET model suite and and allows for addition of modified or customized versions of some simulated components, network configurations and vehicle coordination, so that new coordination protocols can be developed and tested through the framework. The framework simulates UAV movement dictated by file containing some MAVLink instructions and affected on the fly by different network situations. The UAV swarm coordination protocol emerges from individual interactions between UAVs and has the objective of optimizing the collection of sensor data over an area. It also allows for the simulation of some types of failures to test the protocol adaptability. Every node in the simulation is highly configurable making testing different network opographies, coordination protocols, node hardware configurations and more a quick task.