Experimental investigation of signal attenuation for wireless motes with the mechanical housing

The radiation pattern of the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) node has a significant effect on radio communications. The mechanical housing to protect the motes from the damage can also lead to the unexpected performance issues in WSN. This paper investigates the impact of the radio module radiation pattern depending upon the position of the mote and identifying factors which affects achieving high packet delivery ratio. This is mainly influenced by mote deployment scenarios such as position of the motes, influence from mechanical housing etc. This paper also addresses the attenuation effect of the external housing with respect to the distance, packet size, transmission power and packet transmission interval time. Since the transceiver is the most energy consuming module in the mote, the experimental results provides vital information to optimize energy consumption.