Group Connectivity Model for Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

It is a recent trend to consider wireless sensor networks in harsh industrial environments. With actual deployment of wireless sensor networks, it would be desirable to make a concrete deployment plan regarding connectivities and to place sensors by grouping them according to the planned deployment points, even more in case of targeting multiple objects to be sensed and monitored in harsh environments. The connectedness of groups as well as individual sensors is important specifically for real-time data acquisitions and even more if there are no external communication links among these groups. In this paper, we focus on the connectivity of sensor groups, rather than the individual sensors only, and propose a novel <i xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">group connectivity model</i> so as to analyze group connectivity and to make a concrete deployment plan of sensor groups with regard to the internal distribution of sensors and group positions. We believe that the proposed model should be useful in planning the deployment of wireless sensor networks in harsh industrial environments where running wires is less practical and also prohibitively expensive.