A Robust Sensor Deployment of Wireless Sensor Networks for Home Automation

For wireless sensor network applications, sensor node deployment is the most essential and important issue, as a sensor network system has to meet the basic requirements of sensing coverage and sensor node connectivity. Therefore, many sensor nodes have to be deployed. However, when sensor nodes are densely deployed in home environments, network communication problems such as multi-path fading, shadowing effect, channel contention, and interference occur. Thus, system performance and reliability degrade. In this paper, we present a set of robust deployment mechanisms that includes a cluster-based network architecture, a coverage-oriented sensor placement algorithm, a location-oriented sensor placement algorithm, and an Adaptive Transmission Power and Channel Hopping (ATPCH) algorithm to support complete sensing coverage, fault tolerance, and reliable network communication. The proposed deployment strategies and algorithms were implemented in our testbed environment, which is an indoor fading environment with WiFi and Bluetooth interference. The experimental results showed that the average packet reception rate was maintained at about 86.5%. The network quality control algorithm was evaluated, and the link quality was found to be improved by 50%.