[Commotion-dev] Lab setup and initial test results

[Will Hawkins]

It is a facility that does lots of RF testing and we were able to work
out a cooperative agreement. It's a really neat lab. We'll send around
pictures and things (via that promised blog post) that will give a
better sense of what the lab looks like and how it works.



Will

On 01/15/2013 04:22 PM, Paul Gardner-Stephen wrote:
> This is really interesting.
> 
> Did they create the facility specially, or is it a facility that
> already exists, and they have given you access to?
> 
> Paul.
> 
> On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 6:14 AM, Will Hawkins
> <hawkinsw at opentechinstitute.org> wrote:
>> Hello everyone!
>>
>> As Andrew mentioned in previous emails, we have partnered with a local
>> organization to help us create a physical laboratory testbed for doing
>> performance and Q/A testing on Commotion.
>>
>> The testbed consists of several RF-isolating enclosures connected
>> together with a special RF switch. Each enclosure contains a single
>> Ubiquity Picostation running Commotion. Wireless connections (and their
>> quality) among the Commotion nodes are determined by the RF switch. We
>> have deployed 8 nodes in this environment.
>>
>> The enclosures are made by Ramsey and the RF Switch is made by JFW
>> Industries
>> (http://www.jfwindustries.com/catalog/Programmable_Attenuator_Assemblies_19_Rack-48-1.html).
>>
>>
>> The RF switch is programmed with a series of XML documents. These XML
>> documents can represent either
>> a) Literal attenuation values for the RF signal between nodes, or
>> b) "Geographic" location of nodes in 2D space where attenuation values
>> are determined using a freespace loss model.
>>
>> The following is an example of an XML document that configures the
>> switch with literal attentuation values (a):
>>
>> <MESHTEST>
>>   <PATHLOSS>
>>     <INPUTS>1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8</INPUTS>
>>     <MATRIX>
>> 200     25      200     200     200     200     200     200
>> 25      200     25      200     200     200     200     200
>> 200     25      200     200     200     200     25      200
>> 200     200     200     200     200     200     200     200
>> 200     200     200     200     200     200     200     200
>> 200     200     200     200     200     200     200     200
>> 200     200     25      200     200     200     200     25
>> 200     200     200     200     200     200     25      200
>>     </MATRIX>
>>   </PATHLOSS>
>> </MESHTEST>
>>
>> The following is an example of an XML document that configures the
>> switch using geographic node locations (b):
>> <MESHTEST>
>>   <PHYSICAL UNITS="meters" DIMENSION="2" MODEL="freespace">
>>     <NODE INPUT="1" X="400" Y="549"></NODE>
>>     <NODE INPUT="2" X="806" Y="64"></NODE>
>>     <NODE INPUT="3" X="919" Y="82" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>>     <NODE INPUT="4" X="150" Y="844" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>>     <NODE INPUT="5" X="910" Y="151" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>>     <NODE INPUT="6" X="582" Y="807" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>>     <NODE INPUT="7" X="286" Y="217" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>>     <NODE INPUT="8" X="50" Y="285" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>>     <NODE INPUT="9" X="26" Y="730" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>>     <NODE INPUT="10" X="24" Y="710" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>>     <NODE INPUT="11" X="797" Y="110" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>>     <NODE INPUT="12" X="105" Y="653" DISABLE="true"></NODE>
>>   </PHYSICAL>
>> </MESHTEST>
>>
>> We are going to post some additional information about the environment
>> itself (and pictures!) on the blog. I will send a link when that post is
>> available.
>>
>> For our first test, we configured 5 Commotion nodes in a "line" and
>> taken performance measurements using iperf (tcp):
>> a < - > b < - > c < - > g < - > h
>> a <---------------------------> 5.16 Mbps
>> a <-------------------> 6.83 Mbps
>> a <-----------> 10.8 Mbps
>> a <---> 26.5 Mbps
>>
>> Besides performance tests, we are hoping to use this environment for
>> regression testing new builds. We are also looking for input from the
>> Commotion dev community about how to integrate this lab environment with
>> real-world test scenarios. Specifically, we would love to get some input
>> from Ben about how this might augment the testing that he is doing.
>>
>> Will
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>>
>