A ground level radio propagation model for road-based wireless sensor networks

This paper investigates the use of a wireless sensor network (WSN) for communicating between road-based nodes. These nodes are situated at ground level and two-way wireless communication is required between the nodes and from the nodes to a roadside control unit. Measurements have been carried out to examine the propagation close to the ground to determine the maximum distance between road-based nodes as a function of the antenna height. The results show that for a frequency of 2.4 GHz, a range of up to 8m is achievable with 2mW EIRP. An empirical near-ground level radio propagation model is derived and the predicted results from this model are shown to match closely to the measured results.