Assessing the communication performance of wireless sensor networks in rainforests

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have a great potential to serve as a monitoring tool for several applications. In particular, environmental monitoring is a leading flag for WSNs, which can provide significant environmental data for Ecology applications. More specifically, rainforests face several ecological challenges. In this case, WSNs may be used as a supporting tool for preserving and conserving the flora and fauna of such environments. However, we still need practical experiments that help us understanding how data communication is affected by environmental conditions, such as forest density, high humidity, and extreme temperature variations. In this work, we present a set of experiments that assess the communication performance in rainforests. Results show that we still need technological advances before using WSN platforms for large-scale applications in such environments. Our experiments show that the communication range of a WSN, deployed in a dense forest, is reduced by 78%, compared to other environments.