A cost-effective approach to software-in-the-loop simulation of pervasive systems and applications

In this paper we illustrate a cost-effective software-in-the-loop simulation methodology, which is particularly suitable for testing large-scale pervasive systems and applications. The main advantage of such an approach is that real code has to be deployed once, and a general-purpose simulation engine replicates it over virtual devices and environments as often as we wish. Our implementation of the proposed methodology is illustrated by means of the software-in-the-loop simulation of a peer-to-peer information sharing system, with real code running on simulated mobile nodes.