Reliable networks with unreliable sensors Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) deployed in hostile environments suffer from a high rate of node failure. We investigate the effect of such failure rate on network connectivity. We provide a formal analysis that establishes the relationship between node density, network size, failure probability, and network connectivity. We show that large networks can maintain connectivity despite a significantly high probability of node failure. We derive mathematical functions that provide lower bounds on network connectivity in WSNs. We compute these functions for some realistic values of node reliability, area covered by the network, and node density, to show that, for instance, networks with over a million nodes can maintain connectivity with a probability exceeding 95% despite node failure probability exceeding 53%. 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

published proceedings

  • PERVASIVE AND MOBILE COMPUTING

altmetric score

  • 3

author list (cited authors)

  • Sastry, S., Radeva, T., Chen, J., & Welch, J. L.

citation count

  • 7

complete list of authors

  • Sastry, Srikanth||Radeva, Tsvetomira||Chen, Jianer||Welch, Jennifer L

publication date

  • January 2013