OPNET NETWORK SIMULATOR PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Analyzing the Performance of a Wireless LAN

The objective of this project is to study the performance of a wireless LAN and the affect of
changing the number of nodes and the medium bandwidth. We will follow the IEEE 802.11
Medium-access protocol. We are going to play with data rate of 2 Mbps and 11Mbps and the
number of wireless stations in LAN varying form 5 to 10.

Lab Instructions:

1) Start IT Guru
2) Click File
New
3) Give the project name as WLAN_<your initials>
4) Give the scenario name as “5Nodes”
5) Select the following values for the rest of the Startup Wizard:

Initial Topology
Create Empty Scenario

Network Scale
Office
Size:
XSpan: 100 and YSpan: 100

6) Do not select any technologies, just click Next

7) Just review the wizard parameters selected and click OK
8) An empty project workspace opens up along with the object palette. In the object palette,
instead of the default internet_toolbox, select wireless_lan_adv from the pull-down menu.
9) Drag and drop 5 wlan_station_adv(fixed) nodes into the project workspace.
10) Right-click on one of the wireless LAN stations and select “Similar Nodes”
11) Again, right-click one of the stations and select “Edit Attributes”
12) Make sure the “Apply Changes to Selected Objects” checkbox at the bottom of the
attributes window is checked.

Set the values as shown in the next page. Leave the node names to be node_0, node_1, etc. Note
that if the “Distribution Name” and “Mean Outcome” are not editable, select “Not used” instead
of “Never”.
 13) Right-click on the project workspace and select “Choose Individual Statistics”.
14) Expand “Global Statistics” and then expand “Wireless LAN”
15) Select “Delay (sec)” and click OK
16) Choose File
Save and save the project

Now, let us configure and run the simulation.

17) Click the icon. Set the duration to 2 minutes.

18) Run the simulation and close the simulation progress window after completion.
 19) Right-click on the project workspace and select “View Results”. Expand “Wireless LAN”
and select “Delay”
Capture the figure using PrntScrn or transfer the data to EXCEL and plot it.

Now, we need to repeat the above procedure for scenarios with 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 nodes. To do so,
we need to duplicate the current scenario into five more scenarios and add the appropriate
number of nodes in the duplicated scenarios.

Run the simulation for each of these scenarios for 2 minutes.

Now, we need to compare the delay incurred in all the six scenarios.

20) Right-click on the project workspace and select “Compare Results”.

21) Expand “Wireless LAN” and select “Delay”.
22) Make sure, we select “average” instead of “as is” from the pull-down menu at the bottom
of the “Compare Results” screen. Then, click Show.
23) Capture the figure in PrntScrn or transfer the data to EXCEL and plot them.

What to turn in:

(i) Figures representing the delay with 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 nodes for the channel
bandwidth of 2Mbps.
(ii) Your comments on the performance of the LAN based on the above figures.