Additional Features

[harelber]

Hi @GUVWAF ,
I am interested whether the simulator can be enhanced by:

1. Enlarging the grid, from 12 KM X 12 KM to 25x25.
2. Using >100 nodes
3. Adding simulated obstacles like mountains

Do you know whether I can add these to the simulator?

[GUVWAF]

Hey,

1. You can change it here: https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtasticator/blob/master/lib/config.py#L12. In this file are also several other configuration parameters.
2. For the discrete event simulator you can simply change the number of nodes e.g. using python3 loraSim.py 200. For the interactive simulator in principle you can do so as well, but you'll likely need a very good computer to run more than 100 instances of the firmware.
3. In principle this should be possible, but it would require a significant amount of coding. You'll have to change the pathloss model to incorporate obstacles as well.

[harelber]

@GUVWAF I am working on a research project involving the simulator. If you want to collaborate, me and my colleague would be happy to talk.
Please let me know how to reach out to you if this sounds interesting to you.

[GUVWAF]

Unfortunately I only have very limited free time to work on projects like this, so I'm sorry but I have to decline the offer.
If you need any specific help you're always welcome to open issues though.

[harelber]

@GUVWAF Thanks for your response.
Do you have any initial pointers as to how to change the pathloss model to include obstacles?
Thanks!

[GUVWAF]

The current pathloss model implementation can be found here:

Meshtasticator/lib/phy.py

Line 110 in b98ac26

def estimatePathLoss(conf, dist, freq, txZ=conf.HM, rxZ=conf.HM):

As you can see it only includes distance between nodes (and operating frequency), but does not take any additional attenuation into account. If you want to make it simple, you could define an obstacle at a certain location and when the line between the two nodes crosses that obstacle, you can add a certain amount of additional pathloss (e.g. 10dB).

If you really want to make it realistic, you could consider adding the SPLAT! RF analysis tool, which is also used by https://github.com/meshtastic/meshtastic-site-planner. Would be really cool to have this integrated with the simulator :)

[harelber]

Thanks, @GUVWAF .

Is there a way to add the obstacles similar to the nodes themselves, in other words - in a GUI way - such that their addition can be easily propagated to the whole code?
I saw that the estaimeatePathLoss is called 5 times from different functions, thus adding obstacles should be added for each one of them.

[GUVWAF]

In principle yes, you should add a method to draw the obstacles and store their coordinates e.g. in the Graph object. Instead of calling estimatePathloss() with the distance between nodes, you call it with the coordinates of the nodes, and inside the function you check whether the line between the nodes crosses an object and if so, you add the extra pathloss.

[harelber]

I will clarify, @GUVWAF

Is adding the obstacle as a new type of node (similar to client/router) logical? of course, i will need to remove any message-transferring functionality...

[GUVWAF]

That's an option, yes, but I'd imagine you want to draw the obstacle with e.g. a polygon instead of a single dot? You could e.g. look at the Polygon Selector. So for example, in the plot you could add a button for "Draw obstacle", and then use the polygon selector. Then add the coordinates of the polygon to a list of obstacles and then, like I described before, in estimatePathloss() calculate whether the line-of-sight path between two nodes crosses any of the obstacles.

Hope this helps, but I'm also not an expert in these GUI-related things.