FANS Extended

This repository provides a modular and scalable codebase for Ad-hoc message transfer among multiple nodes, implemented using NS-3. It also includes integration with ROS for testing real-world networking scenarios, particularly those involving UAVs. The stack was initially developed and tested on a Jetson Nano running Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic, and all associated installations are designed to ensure compatibility with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

Future developments will focus on enhancing support for Ubuntu 22.04 or later, with a specific emphasis on adapting the code to work with ROS 2 and integrating it with the NS-3 simulator.

System Requirements:

• Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic)
• NS-3 Dev/3.40
• ROS Melodic
• MAVROS

VS CODE installation

Install older version of VS Code

wget https://update.code.visualstudio.com/1.62.3/linux-deb-arm64/stable -O vscode_arm64_old.deb
sudo dpkg -i vscode_arm64_old.deb
sudo apt -f install

NS-3 Installation

--Pending--

ROS Installation

• Install ROS Melodic Morenia
• Official documentation can be found here

Mavros Installation

• Create a new workspace and follow official installation instructions from here
• For libgeographiclib failure, just install them separately before running install_geographiclib_datasets.sh.

Creating Executable (mavad_main)

This section focusses on running your own ROS-NS-3 scripts by creating an executable.

Create a ROS package

Using NS-3 packages in your scripts requires you to have them inside the ns-3-dev or ns-3.40 folder. However ROS is not sourced inside the hardware folder itself. To work around this problem, we create a ROS package inside the ns-3-dev or ns-3.40 folder, and source NS-3 packages inside that by making changes to the package CMakeLists.txt file.

• Inside ns-3-dev or ns-3.40, run:

    catkin_create_pkg ros_ns3 roscpp rospy std_msgs geometry_msgs mavros_msgs

• Change the package CMakeLists.txt file by adding the following lines at the very bottom:

  file(GLOB_RECURSE mavades ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/*.cc)
  set(DONT_BUILD )
  set(libraries_to_link ${libwifi} ${libapplications} ${libolsr} ${libnetanim} ${libinternet} ${libflow-monitor} ${libcore} ${libmobility} ${libconfig-store} ${libstats} ${libcsma} ${libbridge})
  add_executable(mavad_main src/node_x.cc)
  target_link_libraries(mavad_main ${catkin_LIBRARIES} ${ns3-libs} ${ns3-contrib-libs})

• Here you have to replace node_x.cc with the name of your script, ideally inside ros_ns3/src. You can create your own script using terminal command:

    touch my_script.cc

• The executable file (mavad_main) has been initialized here and will be created once the package is built.

Add ros package contents as build dependencies

• NS-3 won't build ros_ns3 package if it is not added as a build dependency in NS-3. To do that, add the following line in the CMakeLists.txt inside ns-3-dev or ns-3.40, under #Build test utils:

    add_subdirectory(ros_ns3)

• Next build NS-3 using:

  cd ~/hardware/ns-3-allinone && ./build.py

• Once the build is done, you can navigate to ~/hardware/ns-3-allinone/ns-3-dev/cmake-cache/devel/lib/ros_ns3 to find mavad_main. This is also where the .pcap files will be saved once you run hardware emulation scripts.

Run your script

• Default nodes mentioned in the repo act as ros nodes, so we need:

  roscore

• Then in a separate terminal, run:

  script -q /home/$USER/witness.txt
  sudo -i
  cd /home/$USER/hardware/ns-3-allinone/ns-3-dev/cmake-cache/devel/lib/test
  source /opt/ros/melodic/setup.bash
  source /home/$USER/fans_ws/devel/setup.bash
  sudo ip link set wlan0 promisc on
  ./mavad_main

Testing on UAV Hardware

• Clone the control_scripts package into a new workspace and build it.
• The framework is as follows:
  • UAV(X) receives state/mode of UAV(Y) via node_x.cc (mavad_main).
  • node_x.cc publishes received mode to a local rostopic.
  • root_controller in control_scripts subscribes to said topic and finds out what mode previous UAV has changed to.
  • root_controller changes mode of UAV(X) to the received mode until another change in mode is discovered.

Contributors

• Subhodeep Choudhury
• Nitya Ahuja

Acknowledgement

This work is supported by the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB-SRG/2019/001204), Government of India.

Related Publication

Field	Details
Title	Hardware Implementation of FANET Using FANS
Authors	Subhodeep Choudhury Nitya Ahuja Abhishek Joshi Sarang C. Dhongdi
Publishing Organization	ACM
Published in	International Conference on ns-3 (ICNS3)
Conference / Journal	Conference
Dates	19th August - 21st August 2025
Location	Ibaraki Osaka Japan
Hosted by	Ritsumeikan University, Osaka Ibaraki Campus
Co-Hosted by	Tokushima University Japan
Submitted	4th April 2025
Accepted	2nd June 2025
Published	18th August 2025
DOI	10.1145/3747204.3747223
ISBN	979-8-4007-1517-4
Location	On Page(s): 162-167