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European Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks

EWSN 2013: Wireless Sensor Networks pp 115–130Cite as

Understanding Link Dynamics in Wireless Sensor Networks with Dynamically Steerable Directional Antennas

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCCN,volume 7772))

Abstract

By radiating the power in the direction of choice, electronically-switched directional (ESD) antennas can reduce network contention and avoid packet loss. There exists some ESD antennas for wireless sensor networks, but so far researchers have mainly evaluated their directionality. There are no studies regarding the link dynamics of ESD antennas, in particular not for indoor deployments and other scenarios where nodes are not necessarily in line of sight. Our long-term experiments confirm that previous findings that have demonstrated the dependence of angle-of-arrival on channel frequency also hold for directional transmissions with ESD antennas. This is important for the design of protocols for wireless sensor networks with ESD antennas: the best antenna direction, i.e., the direction that leads to the highest packet reception rate and signal strength at the receiver, is not stable but varies over time and with the selected IEEE 802.15.4 channel. As this requires protocols to incorporate some form of adaptation, we present an intentionally simple and yet efficient mechanism for selecting the best antenna direction at run-time with an energy overhead below 2 standard omni-directional transmissions.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Uppsala University, Sweden

    Thiemo Voigt & Kasun Hewage

  2. Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS), Kista, Sweden

    Thiemo Voigt & Luca Mottola

  3. Politecnico di Milano, Italy

    Luca Mottola

Authors
  1. Thiemo Voigt
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  2. Luca Mottola
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  3. Kasun Hewage
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Technology (INTEC), Ghent University - iMinds, Gaston Crommenlaan 8 Bus 201, 9050, Ghent, Belgium

    Piet Demeester  & Ingrid Moerman  & 

  2. Computer Science Department, Johns Hopkins University, 204 Shaffer Hall, 3400 North Charles Street, 21218, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Andreas Terzis

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© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Voigt, T., Mottola, L., Hewage, K. (2013). Understanding Link Dynamics in Wireless Sensor Networks with Dynamically Steerable Directional Antennas. In: Demeester, P., Moerman, I., Terzis, A. (eds) Wireless Sensor Networks. EWSN 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7772. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36672-7_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36672-7_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-36671-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-36672-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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