Statistical Characterization of the 2.4 GHz Radio Channel for WSN in Indoor Office Environments

In this paper we present the results and the assessment of a statistical analysis of the wireless sensor networks (WSN) radio channel in indoor office scenarios. The work is based on an extensive set of received signal strength (RSS) measurements collected within different typical indoor spaces and node placement scenarios. Results are compared with corresponding values from the log-distance model, which is the most widely used in WSN simulators. Channel temporal stability is also analyzed. The analysis reveals interesting regularities within the measured data and as expected we observe a highly non-stationary behavior of the RSS. We also propose several improvements for the channel model of WSN simulators based on our observations. They can be beneficial for running more accurate network simulations for such applications as localization.