Analysis of signal propagation in an experiment room with epoxy covered floor for wireless sensor network applications

As sensor applications combined with wireless network becoming more of an everyday applications, the optimal deployment becomes ever increasing important as that would be a key important factor in the trade-off between cost and link quality. This paper reports on the effect of epoxy covered floor on signal propagation characteristics in an experiment room. Microchip developed motes were used to measure signal propagation in an experiment room where sensors would be deployed extensively. The results show that the signal strength for 30 cm antenna height provides a significant margin with respect to signal noise floor. As for the 5 cm antenna height, there is still around 25 dB margin in average before the signal reaches noise floor. Analysis shows that the log-distance model is the best fit to the measured data. Free Space Loss model seemed to under estimate the overall performance of the signals. An important conclusion from this study is that wireless mote deployment must consider the margin between the two signals of antenna heights and the margin to noise floor to avoid link quality deterioration especially for sensitive data acquisition applications.