Is low-power wireless networking a reproducible science?

Abstract

Recently, a noticeable number of attempts to reproduce experimental results across many different scientific fields were unsuccessful. In the field of low- power wireless networking, the dynamic behavior of the environment causes an inherited variability in the performance of wireless networking protocols, placing under consideration their reproducibility. In this semester project, a methodology for evaluating the performance of low- power wireless networking protocols targeted for periodic, non real-time data collection applications is proposed. In addition, we present a case study, where we apply the proposed methodology to evaluate the performance of a state-of-the-art low-power protocol, Crystal. Finally, based on this methodology, we propose definitions for repeatability, replicability and reproducibility in the context of low-power wireless networking.