Evaluation of the received signal strength indicator for node localization in wireless sensor networks

A wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of a large number of sensor nodes that are capable of detecting many types of information from the environment, including temperature, light, humidity, radiation and seismic vibrations. Current applications of WSNs include: physical security, air tra c control, video surveillance, environment and building monitoring. Such applications require that each sensor node knows its exact location. In this context, the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) is often used for distance measurements between the sensor nodes. This thesis presents a method for the evaluation of the RSSI properties in application to node localization in WSN. More speci cally, a WSN application is implemented for collecting RSSI measurement in di erent conditions. The application consists of two parts: an experiment control script which runs on a computer, and an experiment mote rmware which runs on each WSN node. Statistical analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to determine the factors a ecting the RSSI measurements. Result analysis shows that: the relation between RSSI values and distances depends on the environment; the used WSN motes are manufactured with enough precision, as the di erences between the motes are insigni cant; even if the RSSI measurements have signi cant variation, the mean RSSI values correlate with the distances; using di erent transmission power levels can provide additional information about the distances. To my parents, Zoja Konstantinovna and Vasilij Nikiforovich Smolau.