Understanding the Link-Level Behaviors of a Large Scale Urban Sensor Network
Jiliang Wang, Wei Dong · 2016
We present the first comprehensive link-level measurements in an operational large-scale urban sensor network. By carefully analyzing the performance metrics, we seek to answer several fundamental questions: what are the characteristics of links in a real large-scale network, and what causes link performance degradation? The key findings of this study are that (1) the performance of intermediate links is the most unpredictable and some links exhibit highly periodic patterns, (2) the width of the reception "transitional region" is much larger than those reported in previous experiments, indicating that an outdoor environment might have a larger impact on the link performance and current protocol parameters should be carefully designed, and (3) different from previously reported results, link performance degradation has a relatively weak correlation with the corresponding RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) values fluctuating near the noise floor.