A Testbed for Radio Propagation [2pt] Measurements in Wireless [10pt] Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) consist of several sensor nodes which communicate with each other over a wireless channel. There are many real-world deployments of WSNs, for example they are used for environmental monitoring in the mountains as well as in cities to monitor the air pollution. There are different models which try to describe the wireless channel between nodes within WSNs, but they often fail because they do not consider all possible effects which may occur in reality. In this semester thesis, we build a testbed to characterize wireless channels in real WSNs. The testbed allows for partially automated characterization with respect to different parameters. Based on the developed testbed, measurements are conducted in two different environments (indoor and anechoic chamber). Initial tests show that the measurement results in an anechoic chamber are similar to the models whereas in a real environment the measured values differ significantly. Furthermore, the characteristics of the wireless channels do not only depend on the environment but also on the nodes.