Hydra: A Wireless Multihop Networking Testbed

Hydra is a flexible wireless network testbed being developed at UT-Austin. The system is built from existing off-the-self hardware, together with several open source projects. Hydra is designed to be a portable environment to implement various wireless networking protocols, both at the physical (PHY) and media access control (MAC) layers. The system can also be used to see the effects of wireless networks on higher-level protocols, like TCP. Though useful, simulation is not enough to validate the usefulness of newer wireless protocol designs. Hydra provides both the enthusiast and the professional with an excellent platform for implementing new ideas.

Some of the technologies currently supported include:

• Orthogonal frequency domain modulation (OFDM)
• Multiple antennas (MIMO)
• Rate-adaptive MAC
• Physical layer frame aggregation

Our entire implementation is based upon currently available open source software, and we plan to release our implementation as it evolves. Some of the current components include:

• GNU/Linux computing platform
• GNURadio
• The Click Modular Router
• A Universal Software Radio Peripheral, an open radio front end.

The proposed demonstration consists of a working network session (HTTP or SSH) over two (or more) Hydra nodes.