Field measurements and guidelines for the application of wireless sensor networks to the environment and security

Frequently, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are designed focusing on applications and omitting transmission problems in these wireless networks. In this paper, we present a measurement campaign that has been carried out using one of the most commonly used WSN platforms, the micaZ from Crossbow(©). Based on these measurements, some guidelines to deploy a robust and reliable WSN are provided. The results are focused on security and environmental applications but can also be extrapolated to other scenarios. A main conclusion that can be extracted is that, from the transmission point of view, a dense WSN is one of the best choices to overcome many of the transmission problems such as the existence of a transitional region, redundance, forwarding, obstructions or interference with other systems.