TY - GEN
T1 - Impact of radio irregularity on wireless sensor networks
AU - Zhou, Gang
AU - He, Tian
AU - Krishnamurthy, Sudha
AU - Stankovic, John A.
PY - 2004
Y1 - 2004
N2 - In this paper, we investigate the impact of radio irregularity on the communication performance in wireless sensor networks. Radio irregularity is a common phenomenon which arises from multiple factors, such as variance in RF sending power and different path losses depending on the direction of propagation. From our experiments, we discover that the variance in received signal strength is largely random; however, it exhibits a continuous change with incremental changes in direction. With empirical data obtained from the MICA2 platform, we establish a radio model for simulation, called the Radio Irregularity Model (RIM). This model is the first to bridge the discrepancy between spherical radio models used by simulators and the physical reality of radio signals. With this model, we are able to analyze the impact of radio irregularity on some of the well-known MAC and routing protocols. Our Results show that radio irregularity has a significant impact on routing protocols, but a relatively small impact on MAC protocols. Finally, we propose six solutions to deal with radio irregularity. We evaluate two of them in detail. The results obtained from both the simulation and a running testbed demonstrate that our solutions greatly improve communication performance in the presence of radio irregularity.
AB - In this paper, we investigate the impact of radio irregularity on the communication performance in wireless sensor networks. Radio irregularity is a common phenomenon which arises from multiple factors, such as variance in RF sending power and different path losses depending on the direction of propagation. From our experiments, we discover that the variance in received signal strength is largely random; however, it exhibits a continuous change with incremental changes in direction. With empirical data obtained from the MICA2 platform, we establish a radio model for simulation, called the Radio Irregularity Model (RIM). This model is the first to bridge the discrepancy between spherical radio models used by simulators and the physical reality of radio signals. With this model, we are able to analyze the impact of radio irregularity on some of the well-known MAC and routing protocols. Our Results show that radio irregularity has a significant impact on routing protocols, but a relatively small impact on MAC protocols. Finally, we propose six solutions to deal with radio irregularity. We evaluate two of them in detail. The results obtained from both the simulation and a running testbed demonstrate that our solutions greatly improve communication performance in the presence of radio irregularity.
KW - Link asymmetry
KW - Packet loss
KW - Path loss
KW - Radio irregularity
KW - Sending power
KW - Sensor networks
KW - Wireless communication
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U2 - 10.1145/990064.990081
DO - 10.1145/990064.990081
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:4544263123
SN - 1581137931
SN - 9781581137934
T3 - MobiSys 2004 - Second International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services
SP - 125
EP - 138
BT - MobiSys 2004 - Second International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
T2 - MobiSys 2004 - Second International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services
Y2 - 6 June 2004 through 9 June 2004
ER -