The Impact of Physical Conditions on Network Connectivity in Wireless Sensor Network

In wireless sensor networks, end-to-end routing paths need to be established when nodes want to communicate with the desired destination. For nodes assumed to be static, many routing protocols such as Directed Diffusion have been proposed to meet this requirement efficiently. The performance of such routing protocols is relative to the given network connectivity. This paper addresses mobile sensor nodes taking into account the diversity of scattered node density and investigates how physical conditions impact on network connectivity which in turn influences routing performance. Three analysis metrics: path availability, path duration, and interavailable path time are proposed to quantify the impact of different physical conditions on network connectivity. Simulation results show that the network connectivity varies significantly as a function of different physical conditions.