Radio propagation model for long-range ad hoc wireless sensor network

Recently there has been a growing interest in short-range, densely deployed wireless sensor networks. However, the range of applications for these networks is severely limited, as the sensor nodes are unable to communicate over long-distances. There are many applications involving environmental monitoring, which require ad-hoc communications over distances up to 10 km. This paper describes a proposed long-range wireless sensor network and discusses the development of a suitable long-range ad-hoc propagation model to predict the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for radio links over irregular terrain. This paper shows that the SNR for such links can be approximated using a Rician distribution and concludes by providing an example of SNR prediction for a proposed rural test site.