SimulatorOrchestrator

A simulator for osmotic and 6G smart-city architectures.

SimulatorOrchestrator simulates the Presentation and the Session layer of an osmotic architecture where IoT devices are communicating directly to the cloud. Differently from other simulators, the IoT devices are not meant to be static, but are travelling within a Smart-City scenario. Furthermore, given the recently studied overlaps between the Cell-Free architecture and the Edge infrastructure for the Osmotic environment, we designed new packet routing algorithms outperforming previous solutions designed for Software Designed Networks over 5G infrastructures (Gillgallon et al., 2025). We are currently investigating on the possibility of tracking down patients on life-support and ambulances sending data within a Smart-City environment (Almutairi et al., 2024): this idea got us a Best Paper Award at eHPWAS’24.

An external tool generates the vehicular traces.

SimulatorBridger injects this information to generate communications patterns as soon as a vehicle approaches an Edge node.

The Central Agent and Cell-Free CPU node orchestrates different Edge subnetworks so to balance the communication times.

The principle of the simulator is quite easy: the simulator takes as a input the cars' position in time as an input (left), for then injecting such information to a specific agent within the simulation interacting with the communication infrastructure (center) governed by a central agent (right) (Almutairi et al., 2023).

The simulator enables testing a network infrastructure over multiple osmotic configurations (Almutairi et al., 2024), several different packet routing algorithms (Gillgallon et al., 2024), while both considering both vehicular traces (Almutairi et al., 2023) as well as simplistic trace counting (Almutairi et al., 2024).

Using the simulator is quite easy: all you have to do is to manually set the .yaml file configurations and use the simulator code directly from Java by using a code similar to the following:

class MyClass {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
           // TODO
	}
}

If you ar an unyielding Python simp, you can still invoke our simulator via JPype.

References

2025

SimulatorOrchestrator: A 6G-Ready Simulator for the Cell-Free/Osmotic Infrastructure

Rohin Gillgallon, Reham Almutairi, Giacomo Bergami, and 1 more author

Sensors, Apr 2025

Abs Preprint Bib HTML

To the best of our knowledge, we offer the first IoT-Osmotic simulator supporting 6G and Cloud infrastructures, leveraging the similarities in Software-Defined Wide Area Network (SD-WAN) architectures when used in Osmotic architectures and User-Centric Cell-Free mMIMO (massive multiple-input multiple-output) architectures. Our simulator acts as a simulator orchestrator, supporting the interaction with a patient digital twin generating patient healthcare data (vital signs and emergency alerts) and a VANET simulator (SUMO), both leading to IoT data streams towards the cloud through pre-initiated MQTT protocols. This contextualises our approach within the healthcare domain while showcasing the possibility of orchestrating different simulators at the same time. The combined provision of these two aspects, joined with the addition of a ring network connecting all the first-mile edge nodes (i.e., access points), enables the definition of new packet routing algorithms, streamlining previous solutions from SD-WAN architectures, thus showing the benefit of 6G architectures in achieving better network load balancing, as well as showcasing the limitations of previous approaches. The simulated 6G architecture, combined with the optimal routing algorithm and MEL (Microelements software components) allocation policy, was able to reduce the time required to route all communications from IoT devices to the cloud by up to 50.4% compared to analogous routing algorithms used within 5G architectures.
@article{s25051591, author = {Gillgallon, Rohin and Almutairi, Reham and Bergami, Giacomo and Morgan, Graham}, title = {SimulatorOrchestrator: A 6G-Ready Simulator for the Cell-Free/Osmotic Infrastructure}, journal = {Sensors}, volume = {25}, year = {2025}, number = {5}, article-number = {1591}, url = {https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/25/5/1591}, issn = {1424-8220}, publisher = {MDPI}, dimensions = {true}, doi = {10.3390/s25051591}, }

2024

Best Paper Award

Approximating Real-Time IoT Interaction Through Connection Counting: A QoS Perspective

Reham Almutairi, Rohin Gillgallon, Giacomo Bergami, and 1 more author

In 2024 20th International Conference on Wireless and Mobile Computing, Networking and Communications (WiMob), Apr 2024

Bib HTML

@inproceedings{simbridger2,
  author = {Almutairi, Reham and Gillgallon, Rohin and Bergami, Giacomo and Morgan, Graham},
  booktitle = {2024 20th International Conference on Wireless and Mobile Computing, Networking and Communications (WiMob)},
  title = {Approximating Real-Time IoT Interaction Through Connection Counting: A QoS Perspective},
  year = {2024},
  volume = {},
  number = {},
  pages = {260-265},
  keywords = {Wireless communication;Performance evaluation;Patient monitoring;Quality of service;Real-time systems;Internet of Things;Resource management;Reliability;Optimization;Mobile computing;IoT;Healthcare Transportation;Traffic Simulators;Patient Monitoring},
  doi = {10.1109/WiMob61911.2024.10770322},
  dimensions = {true},
}

Testing Routing Strategies by Simulating the Mobile IoT Edge/Cloud Continuum

Rohin Gillgallon, Giacomo Bergami, and Graham Morgan

In IEEE International Smart Cities Conference, ISC2 2024, Pattaya, Thailand, Apr 2024

Bib

@inproceedings{ISC224,
  author = {Gillgallon, Rohin and Bergami, Giacomo and Morgan, Graham},
  title = {Testing Routing Strategies by Simulating the Mobile IoT Edge/Cloud Continuum},
  booktitle = {{IEEE} International Smart Cities Conference, {ISC2} 2024, Pattaya,
                    Thailand},
  publisher = {{IEEE}},
  year = {2024},
  dimensions = {true},
}

SimulatorBridgerDfT: A Real-Data Simulator for IoT-Osmotic Interactions

Reham Almutairi, Giacomo Bergami, and Graham Morgan

In Proceedings of the 2024 12th International Conference on Information Technology: IoT and Smart City, Dec 2024

Bib

@inproceedings{icit,
  author = {Almutairi, Reham and Bergami, Giacomo and Morgan, Graham},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2024 12th International Conference on Information
                    Technology: IoT and Smart City},
  title = {SimulatorBridgerDfT: A Real-Data Simulator for IoT-Osmotic Interactions},
  year = {2024},
  volume = {},
  number = {},
  series = {ICIT  (in press)},
  month = dec,
  dimensions = {true},
}

2023

Platform for Energy Efficiency Monitoring Electrical Vehicle in Real World Traffic Simulation

Reham Almutairi, Giacomo Bergami, Graham Morgan, and 1 more author

In 2023 IEEE 25th Conference on Business Informatics (CBI), Jun 2023

Abs Bib HTML

The increasing popularity and attention in VANETs has prompted researchers to develop accurate and realistic simulation tools. The realistic simulation for VANETs is a challenging task as road networks have high mobility of vehicles. Many efforts have been made in the VANET simulation area to meet the need for coupling network and road traffic simulation. However, none of them permits simulation based on IoT infrastructure. In this work, we are bridging the IoT simulation with the traffic simulation by proposing a novel simulator, Simulator-Bridger. To achieve this, our proposed simulator bridges IoTSim-OsmosisRES with Sumo, a traffic simulator, where the former had to be extended to support mobility vehicles. We substantiate the suitability of our proposed approach by showing how state-of-the-art IoT simulators can manage communication-network traffic information as generated by a real-life urban mobility scenario through VANET simulators.
@inproceedings{simbridger1, author = {Almutairi, Reham and Bergami, Giacomo and Morgan, Graham and Gillgallon, Rohin}, booktitle = {2023 IEEE 25th Conference on Business Informatics (CBI)}, title = {Platform for Energy Efficiency Monitoring Electrical Vehicle in Real World Traffic Simulation}, year = {2023}, volume = {}, number = {}, pages = {1-8}, keywords = {Couplings;Roads;Vehicular ad hoc networks;Traffic control;Road traffic;Energy efficiency;Task analysis;Traffic Simultors;VANET;IoT}, doi = {10.1109/CBI58679.2023.10187450}, issn = {2378-1971}, month = jun, dimensions = {true}, }