Performance Analysis of Received Signal Strength and Link Quality in Wireless Sensor Networks

In Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), signal propagation is mainly affected by external and internal conditions, like interferences, noise and weather conditions. Link quality can be easily affected by environmental factors such as temperature, humidity and wind speed, which introduces a variability over time and space. Thus, to efficiently, communicate data between deployed nodes, a reliable, secure and accurate communication link should be maintained. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the performance of link quality metrics, especially the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) and link quality indicator (LQI) based on IEEE 802.15.4 wireless standard, adopted by CC1101 radio transceiver. For this, experiments were conducted by varying distances between the base station and one mobile node, in outdoor and indoor environments. Experimental results show that the LQI and RSSI depend on some factors such as distance between transmitter and receiver, air temperature and air humidity, indoor or outdoor deployment environments.