Connectivity of Wireless Sensor Networks with Unreliable Links

Connectivity, as an important property of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), was studied by many previous researchers using the geometric disk model which rests on the switched link model. Basically, shadowing and fading have so heavy impact on links that there are many unreliable links in WSNs. In this paper, we quantify the effect of the long but unreliable hops on the connectivity of WSNs. In our model, each node connects to another node in the network with a certain probability at a given time, and this probability depends on techniques of transmission, channels etc. Based on this model, an overall expression of mean node degree is deduced. Finally, both analytic and simulation results indicate that unreliable long hops can greatly enhance the connectivity of WSNs.