The Visualization Tool for Ad Hoc Networks --- ViTAN is a tool for visualizing the connectivities and link qualities (capacities) between the terminals in wireless ad hoc networks. The tool takes the location of the terminals (specified by x and y coordinates) and the link qualities between the terminals (specified by positive integers) as input. The tool produces a visualization of the graph of the terminals' connectivities in the fig format, which in turn can be converted to any common graphic format. ViTAN does not evaluate the connectivities and link qualities in ad hoc networks. Instead, ViTAN takes the link qualities obtained from other tools, simulations or analytical evaluations as input and graphically visualizes these link qualities and the resulting connectivities in the network. ViTAN facilitates the visual study of complex ad hoc networks by depicting higher link qualities with thicker edges and in darker grey shades. In addition, ViTAN draws the edges at different depth levels of the fig format depending on the corresponding link quality. This feature enables the selective display and visual study of the connectivities provided by links with a specific quality range.
The ViTAN project was realized in cooperation with the Arizona State Univeristy (ASU) and the University of Ferrara. Therefore, the tool can be downloaded also from the ASU and from Universita di Ferrara.
A related technical report and the ViTAN tool can be downloaded. Feel free to use the tool to generate your plots for presentation or publication. In this case please cite our work.
The tool is written in Perl and is tested on Linux, Mandrake, Red Hat, and WindowsXP. In case you use the tool please give us also a short feedback to improve the tool.
Output of the ViTAN tool
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Downloads
Here you can find all downloadable files regarding the ViTAN package.
ViTAN tool
ViTANv10.tar.gz
ViTANv11.tar.gz
Manual
ViTAN.pdf
ViTANv11.pdf
Related Documents
fitzekWWRF7WG4.pdf
Publication where ViTAN tool was used.
Examples for ViTAN output
In the following we show some more example outputs of the ViTAN tool. In case you generated your own nice figures, we would like to add them here.
Future Work for ViTAN
We would like to encourage researchers to contribute to the ViTAN open source project. The first release is now available, but we are still improving the tool. Every contribution will be added to the tool. Every contributor will be cited in the respective report. Help is needed for the following work packages.
list for further work
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automatic size configuration of the included gif figures: At the moment static values are set for height and width including the gif figures, but it might be helpful to detect the size automatically |
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User Interface for: specifying the input/output file; displaying the figure; manipulating the data |
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Refinements of the visual presentation, e.g., restricting the coverage area to the inside of the bounding box |
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Introducing float values for the quality |
