An Analytical Model for Link Evaluation of Wireless Sensor Networks

It is very important to design the upper protocols for wireless sensor networks by underlying link quality evaluation. Firstly, the respective characteristics of several typical transceiver chips in WSNs are analyzed and an analytical model for 2.4 GHz communication link is established based on CC2420 chip of MicaZ nodes. Secondly, a test environment is built based on the existing MicaZ nodes and the above model is validated by doing some statistical analysis for large numbers of samples. Finally, the correlative empirical values and the corresponding receiver BER formula required by the model are presented in the light of different environments and different wireless transceiver chips. The reasoning in the paper takes on universality and the conclusion drawn from the paper can be used as theoretical basis for the link simulation and can be provided with the reference value for the upper protocol analyzers and designers.