Impact of Link Unreliability and Asymmetry on the Quality of Connectivity in Large-scale Sensor Networks

Abstract

Connectivity is a fundamental issue in research on wireless sensor networks. However, unreliable and asymmetric links have a great impact on the global quality of connectivity (QoC). By assuming the deployment of nodes a homogeneous Poisson point process and eliminating the border effect, this paper derives an explicit expression of node non-isolation probability as the upper bound of one-connectivity, based on an analytical link model which incorporates important parameters such as path loss exponent, shadowing variance of channel, modulation, encoding method etc. The derivation has built a bridge over the local link property and the global network connectivity, which makes it clear to see how various parameter impact the QoC. Numerical results obtained further confirm the analysis and can be used as reference for practical design and simulation of wireless ad hoc and sensor networks. Besides, we find giant component size a good relaxed measure of connectivity in some applications that do not require full connectivity.