Radio Coverage Mapping in Wireless Sensor Networks

Radio coverage directly affects the network connectivity, which is the foundational issue to ensure the normal operation of the network. Many efforts have been made to estimate the radio coverage of sensor nodes. The existing approaches (often RSSI measurement-based), however, suffer from heavy measurement cost and are not well suitable for the large-scale densely deployed WSNs. NRC-Map, a novel algorithm is put forward for sensor nodes radio coverage mapping. The algorithm is based on the RSSI values collected by the neighbor nodes. According to the spatial relationship, neighbor nodes are mapping to several overlapped sectors. By use of the least squares fitting method, a log-distance path loss model is established for each sector. Then, the max radius of each sector is computed according to the path loss model and the given signal attenuation threshold. Finally, all the sectors are overlapped to estimate the node radio coverage. Experimental results show that the method is simple and effectively improve the prediction accuracy of the sensor node radio coverage.