Review on directional antenna for wireless sensor network applications

Abstract

Directional antennas in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have several advantages including the enhanced capacity of the network, longer range of transmission, better spatial reuse and lower interference. By enhancing the alleviating contention and the range of communication, the directional antennas improve the performance of WSNs. In common, various methods like localisation, power management, data aggregation and optimisation obtain these advantages in WSNs; however, the reliability requirements and the energy concerns make the antenna technology more advantageous. When compared with methods, in which the directional antennas provide advantages like the extended range of transmission, energy savings, better prevention of wormhole attack, long coverage and high interference tolerance. This review provides a detailed study of recent improvements and open research problems on directional antennas in WSN applications. First, the introduction and the background of directional antennas briefly based on their classification radiation patterns and advantages in directional communication in WSNs. During the past years, a number of directional antennas are designed for the applications of WSNs. In this study, recently developed directional antennas and their applications in WSNs are reviewed. The applications of directional antenna in WSNs are classified into security benefits, localisation, convergecast, contention reduction and energy efficiency.