Experimental Study on Connectivity for Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Many works have been devoted to connectivity of wireless sensor networks. This is an important feature for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to provide the nodes with the capability of communicating with one or several sinks.To operate successfully a sensor network must also provide satisfactory connectivity so that nodes can communicate for data fusion and reporting to base stations. Connectivity affects the robustness and achievable throughput of communication in a sensor network. We provide an experimental analysis of the fundamental relationship between network connectivity and the density of nodes, as well as the relationship between network connectivity and the nodes’ transmitting ranges. Extensive experimental results prove that our method is feasible and leads to a more accurate thresholds.