Characterization of LQI behavior in WSN for glacier area in Patagonia Argentina

One of the most important aspects before installing a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a previous study of connectivity constraints that exist in the area to be covered. This study is critical to the final distribution of the sensors, with an important impact in the life of the network by reducing consumption, and on the robustness by contemplating redundancy of paths and sensors. In this paper, we present a summary of the most important aspects of a preliminary empirical study of the Link Quality Indicator (LQI), on different landscapes in the glaciers area of Patagonia Argentina. The landscapes covered varied in geographical structures with different levels of attenuation and extreme environmental conditions. Through the analysis of the Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) of the measured LQI values, we can characterize the behavior of four different scenarios and correlate the combined effects of the environmental structure with the distance from the transmitter. The measurements performed were designed for characterizing the links at the physical layer with the purpose of defining models to estimate the Packet Error Rate (PER) for the WSN deployment stage.