NoSSim

Network-of-Systems Simulator

Network-of-Systems Simulator (NoSSim) [1] is a network/system co-simulation framework that combines a fast and accurate host-compiled full system simulator [2] with a standard, reconfigurable OMNeT++ network simulation backplane. Detailed models of network interfaces and protocol stacks (lwIP) are integrated into host-compiled system and OS models to allow accurately capturing network and system interactions.

NoSSim is demonstrated with two IoT application scenarios with different set of network/system configurations.

IoT scenarios:

  examples/vision_graph       -- Vision graph discovery, where the relative position and 
		                 orientation among a network of smart cameras are estimated
		      
  examples/ecg_diagnosis      -- ECG monitoring, where raw ECG signals are used to 
		                 detect heart arrhythmia

Directories:

  json/                      -- JSON lib and configuration file template
  InstrumentLLVM/            -- LLVM function-level instrumentation pass, shared library for profiling and back-annotation
  lwip-hcsim/                -- lwIP stacks ported on SystemC-based OS model (HCSim)
  inet_extra/                -- INET patch for power/energy estimation
  examples/vision_graph/     -- The vision graph discovery example
     ezSIFT/                     - The SIFT (scale-invariant feature transform) algorithm library
     networking_api/             - Networking APIs and runtime libraries (based on lwip and HCSim) 
     src/                        - Source code for application, system and network models

  examples/ecg_diagnosis/    -- The ECG monitoring example
     ecg/     	                 - ECG diagnosis library
     networking_api/             - Networking APIs and runtime libraries (based on lwip and HCSim) 
     src/                        - Source code for application, system and network models

Building and installing:

Build requirements:

• SystemC version 2.3.1 http://www.accellera.org/
• OMNEST version 5.0 http://www.omnest.com/ (alternatively OMNeT++ version 5.0 with SystemC integration http://www.omnetpp.org)
• INET framework version 3.4.0 http://inet.omnetpp.org/

Preparation before build:

• For setting up HCSim (included as a submodule), please see here
• Apply the INET patch (inet_extra) and rebuild INET framework

Preparation before running the example:

• Set the OMNeT++ path:

  pushd /home/slam/OMNET/omnetpp-5.0; . setenv; popd

• Set the INET path by changing the INET_DIR in Makefile for each application

Running:

In general, you should perform a function-level profiling and back-annotation for the lwIP, ECG and ezSIFT library with the provided LLVM pass and helper functions in InstrumentLLVM directory. For the case studies included in this repository, we include profile data for different platforms so that you can directly try them out of box.

To build an example, change into the corresponding example directory and run:

  cd examples/vision_graph
  make dependency
  make makefiles
  make

To run an example, you may want to first change the application, system and network configration files based on your choice, then run:

   cd examples/ecg_diagnosis
   make test

References:

• [1] Z. Zhao, V. Tsoutsouras, D. Soudris and A. Gerstlauer, "Network/System Co-Simulation for Design Space Exploration of IoT Applications," SAMOS, July 2017.
• [2] P. Razaghi, A. Gerstlauer, "Host-Compiled Multi-Core System Simulation for Early Real-Time Performance Evaluation," ACM Transactions on Embedded Computer Systems, 2014.

Contact:

 Zhuoran Zhao <zhuoran@utexas.edu>