Channel Modeling for Wireless Underground Sensor Networks

Wireless underground sensor networks (WUSNs) consist of wireless devices buried below the ground surface and aboveground sink devices, in which the communication medium is not only air but also soil. In this paper, improved channel models based on time-domain are developed to characterize underground-underground, underground-aboveground and aboveground-underground electromagnetic waves channels, which capture the effects of environment parameters such as soil composition and soil moisture, and system parameters such as the antenna gain, operating frequency, the sensor burial depth. The propagation characteristics are investigated through simulation results of path loss between two nodes. This work will accelerate the design and realization of WUSNs.