IoT-Sim: An Interactive Platform for Designing and Securing Smart Device Networks

IoT-Sim is a lightweight, modular, and open-source tool designed to create, configure, and test attack detection models for Internet of Things (IoT) networks. It provides an interactive, client-side simulation environment that runs entirely in your browser, with no dedicated backend server required.

This platform was developed to address the lack of flexible, accessible simulation environments that allow researchers and students to replicate IoT scenarios and evaluate machine learning models under controlled, realistic conditions.

Live Demo

You can access a running instance of the simulator here:

• IoT-Sim Live Application: https://gicap-ubu.github.io/iot-sim/

Key Features

• Visual Network Design: Interactively create and configure IoT network topologies. Add, edit, connect, and remove nodes like Routers, IoT Devices, and PC Attackers.
• Traffic Simulation: Simulate benign network traffic flows between connected devices.
• Attack Generation: Inject controlled cyberattacks, such as Denial of Service (DoS), to test network resilience and detection models.
• AI-Based Intrusion Detection: Load your own pre-trained TensorFlow.js models to analyze network traffic in real-time and visualize intrusion detections.
• Configurable Network Conditions: Introduce network variability, such as latency and bandwidth limitations, to evaluate model performance under realistic conditions.
• Client-Side Architecture: Runs entirely in the user's browser, making it highly accessible and eliminating the need for expensive hardware or complex server deployments.
• Extensible: Users can import external scripts to add new custom commands or attack types, extending the simulator's capabilities.

Technical Stack

The simulator is built using the following technologies:

• Core Framework: Angular
• Languages: TypeScript, HTML, CSS
• AI Models: TensorFlow / TensorFlow.js
• UI Styling: Tailwind CSS , Spartan UI
• Build System: Node.js, npm, Angular CLI

To prepare your own AI models, you will need a separate environment with Python (>= 3.10, < 3.12) and TensorFlow (>= 2.15.0). Models must be converted to TensorFlow.js format (>= 4.22.0) using the tensorflowjs converter tool to be compatible with the simulator.

Documentation

For comprehensive guides and tutorials, please visit our Project Wiki.

Contributing

This is an open-source research project. Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to fork the repository, make your changes, and submit a pull request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Acknowledgements

This publication is part of the AI4SECIoT project ("Artificial Intelligence for Securing IoT Devices"), funded by the National Cybersecurity Institute (INCIBE) of Spain.

This initiative is carried out within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan funds, financed by the European Union (Next Generation).

Citation

If you use IoT-Sim in your research or professional work, please cite our paper published in SoftwareX:

APA Style: Diez Bermejo, A., Martinez Gonzalez, B., Gil-Arroyo, B., Rincón Arango, J., & Urda Muñoz, D. (2026). IoT-Sim: An interactive platform for designing and securing smart device networks. SoftwareX, 33, 102527. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.softx.2026.102527

BibTeX:

@article{Diez_Bermejo_IoT-Sim_An_interactive_2026,
  author = {Diez Bermejo, Alejandro and Martinez Gonzalez, Branly and Gil-Arroyo, Beatriz and Rincón Arango, Jaime and Urda Muñoz, Daniel},
  doi = {10.1016/j.softx.2026.102527},
  journal = {SoftwareX},
  month = jan,
  pages = {102527},
  title = {{IoT-Sim: An interactive platform for designing and securing smart device networks}},
  volume = {33},
  year = {2026}
}