IDEA1: A study of SystemC based Simulator for WSNs

Abstract This paper presents IDEA1, a graphical system-level simulator for wireless sensor networks. It is developed by SystemC and C++. It enables the design space exploration at an early stage of system development. It allows the performance evaluation of sensor networks at high-level, but elaborately takes into account of the hardware and software modeling. SystemC combines advantages of being a widely-used language in micro-electronic systems design flow, and permitting hardware and software co-modeling. The simulator graphical user interface permits to configure easily a network and set the sensor nodes characteristics Simulation gives easy-to-read waveforms and easy-to-process output logs. IDEA1 library contains many hardware devices and the whole IEEE 802.15.4 standard. It is possible to run quick and accurate simulations with different hardware devices on the nodes. Classical network simulators outputs (packet delivery rate (PDR), packet latency) are supported. It is also possible to simulate and compare many scenarios and configurations in order to run design-space exploration for the best-suited and lower power solution. Keywords: Data, IDEA1, Network, SystemC, Wireless