An analysis of a large scale habitat monitoring application

Habitat and environmental monitoring is a driving application for wireless sensor networks. We present an analysis of data from a second generation sensor networks deployed during the summer and autumn of 2003. During a 4 month deployment, these networks, consisting of 150 devices, produced unique datasets for both systems and biological analysis. This paper focuses on nodal and network performance, with an emphasis on lifetime, reliability, and the the static and dynamic aspects of single and multi-hop networks. We compare the results collected to expectations set during the design phase: we were able to accurately predict lifetime of the single-hop network, but we underestimated the impact of multihop traffic overhearing and the nuances of power source selection. While initial packet loss data was commensurate with lab experiments, over the duration of the deployment, reliability of the backend infrastructure and the transit network had a dominant impact on overall network performa...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: SENSYS
• Authors: Robert Szewczyk, Alan M. Mainwaring, Joseph Polastre, John Anderson, David E. Culler
• Keywords: Network Performance, Sensor Networks, SENSYS 2004, Wireless Sensor Networks