Beampattern random behavior in wireless sensor networks with Gaussian distributed sensor nodes

Collaborative beamforming (CB) has been introduced in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to increase the transmission range of sensor nodes. CB improves the power efficiency of the transmission. However, the CB beampattern is random in the sidelobe region. Therefore, it is important to characterize the power level in the sidelobe region to predict the interference to neighboring sensor node clusters. In this paper, we assume that sensor nodes in a cluster of WSN are Gaussian distributed and study the random behavior of the beampattern. To characterize the beampattern in the sidelobe region, we first model the array factor as a complex random variable and find the corresponding mean and variance. The distribution function of beampattern level and the outage probability of sidelobes is derived and compared with the corresponding characteristics resulting from uniform distributed sensor nodes.