Experimental Characterization of Link Quality Indicator in an Indoor Environment using TelosB Sensor Nodes

Abstract: Link Quality Indicator (LQI) is one of the important Link Quality Estimators (LQEs) in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). However previous radios used in Wireless Sensor Network platform do not have LQI metrics in them. In this paper performance evaluation of LQI metric in an indoor environment was done. A test bed developed at the Faculty of Engineering building Nnamdi Azikiwe University was used. The test bed comprised of four sensor nodes in which one functions as the sink and the three others were placed at different angles with respect to the sink. Several measurements taken at different times were averaged, processed and analysed. LQI model of the test bed environment was developed using Linear Regression Analysis. The goodness of fit (R2) of the developed model was found to be 0.80.This shows that the model is good and can comfortably be applied to any environment with similar radio characteristics.

Keywords: TelosB node, Link Quality Indicator, Link Quality Estimator, WSN, test bed.