Radio link quality estimation in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) has a fundamental impact on the network performance and also affects the design of higher-layer protocols. Therefore, for about a decade, it has been attracting a vast array of research works. Reported works on link quality estimation are typically based on different assumptions, consider different scenarios, and provide radically different (and sometimes contradictory) results. This article provides a comprehensive survey on related literature, covering the characteristics of low-power links, the fundamental concepts of link quality estimation in WSNs, a taxonomy of existing link quality estimators, and their performance analysis. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first survey tackling in detail link quality estimation in WSNs. We believe our efforts will serve as a reference to orient researchers and system designers in this area.

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Wireless sensor networks are being considered for use in industrial process and control environments. Unlike traditional deployment scenarios for sensor networks, in which energy preservation is the main design principle, industrial environments stress worker safety and uninterrupted production. To fulfill these requirements, sensor networks must be able to provide performance guarantees for radio communication.In this paper, we consider as a case study the deployment of a sensornet in an oil refinery in Portugal, where sensor nodes are deployed outdoors and might experience high temperature fluctuations. We investigate how the variations of ambient temperature influence data delivery performance and link quality in low-power radio communications. We also study the impact that specific implementation requirements, such as the ATEX fire-safety regulations, can have on the design of the overall network.Our experiments show that temperature directly affects the communication between sensor nodes, and that significantly less transmission power is required at low temperatures. We further illustrate that it is possible to save up to 16% energy during nights and cold periods of the year, while still ensuring reliable communication among sensor nodes. In view of these experimental results, we elaborate on how the temperature influences both the design and the deployment of wireless sensor networks in industrial environments.

Recent technological innovations allow compact radios to transmit over long distances with minimal energy consumption and could drastically affect the way Internet of Things (IoT) technologies communicate in the near future. By extending the communication range of links, it is indeed possible to reduce the network diameter to a point that each node can communicate with almost every other node in the network directly. This drastically simplifies communication, removing the need of routing, and significantly reduces the overhead of data collection. Long-range low-power wireless technology, however, is still at its infancy, and it is yet unclear (i) whether it is sufficiently reliable to complement existing short-range and cellular technologies and (ii) which radio settings can sustain a high delivery rate while maximizing energy-efficiency. To shed light on this matter, this paper presents an extensive experimental study of the reliability of LoRa , one of the most promising long-range low-power wireless technologies to date. We focus our evaluation on the impact of physical layer settings on the effective data rate and energy efficiency of communications. Our results show that it is often not worth tuning parameters, thereby reducing the data rate in order to maximize the probability of successful reception, especially on links at the edge of their communication range. Furthermore, we study the impact of environmental factors on the performance of LoRa, and show that higher temperatures significantly decrease the received signal strength and may drastically affect packet reception.