Radio propagation model for long-range Ad-hoc wireless sensor network

Abstract

Recently there has been a growing interest in short range, densely deployed wireless sensor networks. However, the range of applications for these networks is severely limited, as the sensor nodes are unable to communicate over long-distances. There are many applications involving environmental monitoring, which require ad-hoc communications over distances up to 10km. This paper describes a proposed long-range wireless sensor network and discusses the development of a suitable long range ad-hoc propagation model to predict the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for radio links over irregular terrain. This paper shows that the SNR for such links can be approximated using a Rician distribution and concludes by providing an example of SNR prediction for a proposed rural test site.