Reproducible Wireless Experiments in a Containerized Environment with Hardware Access

Reproducible wireless experiments pose a particular challenge due to their susceptibility to interference and changing channel conditions. Unlike most wired networks, they do not have dedicated connections or well-shared frequencies. This makes broadcast media such as wireless networks a challenge for reproducible experiments that are comparable to real-world scenarios. There are many attempts to approach these difficulties, either by simulation, emulation, or dedicated testbeds. All of them have certain strengths in specific applications, but also certain weaknesses - with respect to accuracy, flexibility, and cost. We therefore propose a combination of a physical link under a controlled environment, together with virtual wireless interfaces (VIFs) used to emulate arbitrary topologies. This allows us to make use of the real-world behavior of hardware with respect to timings such as media access while offering the flexibility of an emulated environment. By using containers for individual emulated nodes that use VIFs we can setup such topologies on a single host. In addition, measurement tools and applications can be run natively within this setup.