Effect of 3D topographical surfaces for the performance evaluation of wireless sensor networks

The soundness of the evaluation model used in wireless sensor networks (WSN) affects the soundness of the results. Most proposed models in the literature assume a distance based sensing and 2D freespace communication for a randomly deployed WSN scenario. However, random sensor deployment commonly takes place in 3D inaccessible terrains. In this study, we investigate the incorporation of a realistic 3D terrain model into the performance evaluation of a target tracking WSN. Our observation is that the unrealistic and contradicting 2D terrain assumptions, in which communication and sensing is not blocked due to neglected topographic formations, result in optimistic and unrealistic WSN performance. The performance evaluations compare the mean error of target localization for a given target route in various artificially generated yet realistic terrains. The effect of terrain parameters on mean error is also investigated. Our simulations show that the performance predictions could be misleading on the paper design due to unrealistic assumptions with regards to the WSN deployment region.