School of Physics, Engineering and Technology

Medium Access and Routing Protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks in Harsh Environments

A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of a large number of wireless sensor nodes which can provide a large amount of information from the deployed environment. A key issue is that RF signals are impaired when propagating through different environments and may suffer significant attenuation, as well as be diffracted, reflected or scattered by obstacles in an environment. Therefore, it is difficult for WSNs to achieve high performance in a harsh environment, or performance equivalent to free space.

The aim of this project is to develop new medium access control and routing strategies for WSNs operating in harsh environments, and to understand how smart antennas may be used to mitigate against some of the propagation impairments. Riverbed Modeler is being used as the primary simulation modelling tool.

Key objectives

To understand the implications of different environments for WSNs and the feasibility of employing smart antennas.
To develop high performance MAC/routing protocols for WSNs in hostile RF environments.
To develop performance models using Riverbed Modeler and implement the proposed approach to illustrate and analyse the outcome of the protocol.

Members

Arnold Chau

John Dawson

Paul Mitchell

Dates

October 2016 to
September 2019

Research