ns3-WiMacStat: Enabling In-Depth WiFi MAC Performance Analysis via RadioTap-Based Statistics
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: As the WiFi standard continues to evolve, the medium access control (MAC) layer of WiFi is becoming increasingly intricate, thus necessitating detailed network simulations for optimization of various algorithms.To gain in-depth understanding of the simulation results, macro-level metrics such as throughput and delay are often insufficient, evaluating micro-level metrics including modulation and coding scheme (MCS), enqueue time and so forth are further crucial.To address this issue, this paper introduces ns3-WiMacStat, a comprehensive and user-friendly tool for collecting, analyzing, and visualizing WiFi MAC statistics within ns-3 simulations.Employing customized trace sources and sinks, ns3-WiMacStat collects 12 key metrics across PPDU, MPDU, and MSDU levels, storing them in a hierarchical database.These statistics are encoded into Pcap files with a customized RadioTap header.Experiment results show that 1) the accurate functionality of ns3-WiMacStat's statistic collection; and 2) neglected runtime overhead compared to standard ns-3 tracing, with a trade-off of increased memory usage.
Authors: Chengxiang Mi, Jingyi Gu, Chengwei Zhang, Yayu Gao
Institution: Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Computer Networks and Communications
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
OpenAlex ID: W4413286554