Ana Bildea
PhD, November 2013
Tuesday 19 November 2013
The goal of the thesis is to investigate the issues related to the temporal link quality variation in large scale WSN environments, to design energy efficient link quality estimators able to distinguish among links with different quality on a short and a long
term.
First, we investigate the characteristics of two physical layer metrics: RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indication) and LQI (Link Quality Indication) on SensLAB, an indoor large scale wireless sensor network testbed. We observe that RSSI and LQI have distinct values that can discriminate the quality of links.
Second, to obtain an estimator of PRR (Packet Reception Ratio), we have fitted a Fermi-Dirac function to the scatter diagram of the average and standard variation of LQI and RSSI. The function enables us to find PRR for a given level of LQI. We evaluate the estimator by computing PRR over a varying size window of transmissions and comparing with the estimator.
Furthermore, we show using the Gilbert-Elliot two-state Markov model that the correlation of packet losses and successful receptions depend on the link category. The model allows to accurately distinguish among strongly varying intermediate links based on transition probabilities derived from the average and the standard variation of LQI.
Finally, we propose a link quality routing model driven from the F-D fitting functions and the Markov model able to discriminate accurately link categories as well as high variable links.