RadiaLE

RadiaLE is a benchmarking testbed that allows the performance evaluation of Link Quality Estimators (LQEs) by analyzing their statistical properties, independently of any external factor, such as collisions and routing. These statistical properties impact the performance of LQEs, in terms of:
- Reliability: It refers to the ability of the LQE to correctly characterize the link state.
- Stability: It efers to the ability to resist to transient (short-term) variations (also called fluctuations) in link quality.

RadiaLE includes (i.) hardware components that represent the WSN under test and (ii.) a software tool for the set up and control of the experiments and also for analyzing the collected data, allowing for LQEs evaluation.

RafiaLE hardware architecture	RafiaLE software tool architecture

RadiaLE hardware architecture involves a set of TelosB motes, connected to a control station (PC) via a USB tree, for controlling and collecting data from the motes without interfering with the wireless communications.
The experimentation is ensured by RadiaLE software tool. It contains two independent applications:
1- ExpCtrApp: Experiment Control Java application used for motes programming/control, network configuration and data logging into a MySQL database.
2. DataAnlApp: Data analysis Matlab application for data analysis/processing and tuning LQEs.

ExpCtrApp facilities:
Motes programming: A nesC application defines a set of protocols for any bidirectional communication between the motes and between the motes and the ExpCtrApp. The ExpCtrApp automatically detects the motes connected to the PC and programs them by installing the nesC application binary code.
Network configuration: The ExpCtrApp enables the user to specify network parameters (e.g. traffic pattern, packets number/size, inter-packet interval, radio channel, transmission power, link layer retransmissions on/off and max. count). These settings are transmitted to the motes to start performing their tasks.
Link measurements gathering: Motes exchange data traffic in order to collect packet statistics such as sequence number, RSSI, LQI, SNR, time stamp or background noise, which are sent via USB to the ExpCtrApp in the PC, which stores these log data into a MySQL database.
Motes control: ExpCtrApp exchanges commands with the motes to control data transmission according tothe traffic pattern set at the network configuration phase. The ExpCtrApp also provides: (i.) a network viewer to visualize the network map and the link quality metrics (e.g. PRR, RSSI) in real-time; and (ii.) a database inspector to view raw data retrieved from the motes in real-time.

DataAnlApp facilities:
DataAnlApp provides a user interface that connects to the database and processes data, with two major functionalities:
1- A set of configurable graphs to understand the channel behavior.
2-. an assistance to RadiaLE users to evaluate the performance of their estimators.
Currently, DataAnlApp integrates a set of well-known LQEs, namely PRR (Packet Reception Ratio), WMEWMA (a smoothed PRR using EWMA filter), RNP(required number of packet retransmissions), ETX(Expected Transmission Count) and four-bit(TinyOS 2 default LQE), as well as F-LQE, our new LQE based on fuzzy logic. Other LQEs can be easily integrated and compared to existing LQEs, due to the flexibility and completeness of the collected empirical data.