Date of Award

2008

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Electrical Engineering

First Advisor

Frolik, Jeffrey

Abstract

A wireless sensor network is a network consisting of spatially distributed, sometimeautonomous sensors, communicating wirelessly to cooperatively achieve some task. For example, a wireless sensor network may be used for habitat monitoring to ascertain the environment’s temperature, pressure, humidity, etc. In order for a wireless sensor network to provide such data, one needs to ensure there is connectivity between nodes. That is, nodes can communicate to exchange information. To analyze connectivity between sensors, the radio communication range of each sensor, also called the communication footprint, needs to be known. To date, the models used to analyze a sensor’s radio communication footprint have been overly simplistic (i.e., isotropic) and thus yield results not found in practice. Footprints are highly dependent on the deployment environments, which are typically heterogeneous and non-isotropic in structure. In this work, a ‘weak-monotonicity’ (W-M) model is leveraged to represent a footprint’s non-isotropic behavior. The work also considers the heterogeneity of the environment through the use of the log-normal shadowing model. In particular, the usable percentage of the W-M footprint (the area where the power exceeds the receiver threshold) in such environments is considered through analysis and simulation. We then develop an enhanced footprint model which overlays multiple W-M patterns and use this method to represent experimental propagation data. The work also considers the use of graph theory methods to analyze the connectivity of randomly deployed networks in nonhomogeneous, non-isotropic environments.

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