SDL Code Generation for Network Simulators

Network simulators are a very popular tool for behavior assessment of distributed and networked systems. Despite this fact, the lack of integration with existing system design tools leads to a difficult and error-prone development of these systems for simulation purposes. Even if the system is correctly implemented, its maintenance becomes a tedious task especially with the increasing complexity. This paper introduces a new approach for addressing these issues through the combination of SDL with code generation and transformation techniques. The goal is automatic C++ code generation resulting in a new module for the network simulator ns-3. The simulator is not subject to any modifications because the new module is integrated within it. This way no external mechanism for bridging system implementation with the simulator is required and the simulation performance is not affected.