Connectivity of large-scale WSNs in fading environments under different routing mechanisms

Abstract

Abstract-As the number of nodes in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) increases, new challenges have to be faced in order to maintain their performance. A fundamental requirement of several applications is the correct transmission of the measurements to their final destinations. Thus, it is crucial to guarantee a high probability of connectivity, which characterizes the ability of every node to report to the fusion center. This network metric is strongly affected by both the fading characteristics and the different routing protocols that are used for the dissemination of data. In this paper, we study the probability of a network to be fully connected for two widely employed routing mechanisms, namely unicast and K-anycast. The analytical derivations and the simulations evaluate the trade-offs among the different routing mechanisms and provide useful guidelines on the design of WSNs.

Connectivity Analysis in Clustered Wireless Sensor Networks Powered by Solar Energy

“…In addition, the connectivity in such networks under different transmission schemes is studied in [5]. The ideas of these works are employed and extended in our paper by considering the network topology and the energy supply, which is an important factor for the network sustainability.…”

“…Unlike nonfading environments (where the range is deterministic [3]), in fading environments the strongest link may not correspond to the nearest neighbor [4]. This fact demonstrates the significance of the transmission scheme employed in the presence of fading, where the differences in the performance of the unicast (i.e., point-to-point transmission) and broadcast (i.e., point-to-multiple points) schemes could be vast in terms of lifetime and quality of service [5]. Moreover, in many real life scenarios, the wireless sensors operate in clustered formations to exchange messages locally with their proximate devices or gateways (GWs).…”

“…In order to calculate the end-to-end connectivity, we have first to ensure that the sensors in each cluster are able to deliver their data to their gateway (cluster coverage) and, then, that each gateway is able to communicate these measurements to the rest of the network. In that way, we will investigate the ability of the network to be fully connected and each gateway to have at least one neighbor that will be able to receive its data, ensuring that there are no isolated GWs, i.e., GWs unable to deliver their messages [3]- [5].…”

“…The integral in (31) can be solved either by employing the modified Gauss-Hermite quadrature as in [5] or by assuming α = 4, which yields…”

“…More specifically, the connectivity and the effects of the transmission schemes in ad-hoc networks have been investigated in [3]- [5]. However, these works do not consider the topology or the energy supply that affect significantly the network performance.…”