Linear Sensor Network

A wireless sensor network (WSN) consists of a large number of sensor nodes deployed in a fixed or random manner over a wide area, for example for environmental monitoring applications. The sensor nodes communicate through radio links and are usually powered by batteries. In most cases, the information produced by the sensors is assigned to a base station called sink node. In the case of monitored infrastructure such as roads, tunnels, pipelines or rails, the sensor nodes are often deployed linearly. This type of network is called linear sensor network (LSN). In such a network, the data frames are carried from node to node until to reach a sink. One of the major challenges faced in linear sensor networks is to perform a good policy of radio communication interference management that takes into account the environment change and the activity of the nodes. This requires a control of propagation conditions, nodes equipped with an efficient data frame reception unit and a MAC protocol taking advantage of the linearity of the topology. .