Modeling and simulation of near-earth wireless sensor networks for agriculture based application using OMNeT++

In recent years, there have been a number of reported studies on the design of communication protocols using simulation platform. However, most of the reported works were evaluated using simple or idealistic wireless communication channel modeling. Experimental results have shown that the characterization and modeling of wireless communication channel is important to achieve a successful implementation of wireless sensor network (WSN) systems in agricultural based application. This paper investigates the impact of propagation model towards WSNs system under OMNeT++ simulation environment. Several realistic propagation models for WSNs are also reviewed. Several well known empirical vegetation models, namely MED Weissberger Model and ITU-Recommendation model are implemented in OMNeT++ simulation platform. It is observed that propagation model used gives significant impact towards the network performances. The results show that a combination of plain earth (PE) and vegetation model give more realistic result and can best describe the behavior of actual WSN systems when deployed in a real environment. Antenna heights and vegetation density are important parameters that affect communication network coverage and connectivity.