The use of a wireless sensor network to monitor the spectrum in urban areas

Wireless sensor networks are a tool increasingly used to monitor various environmental parameters. They can also be used for monitoring the electromagnetic spectrum. Wireless sensors, due to their small size, typically have simplified radio receivers with reduced sensitivity and use small antennas. As a result, their effective performance area is similarly limited. This is especially important in urban areas where there are various kinds of adverse propagation phenomena related to area coverage. The aim of the article is to present the phenomena in the wireless sensor networks and propose criteria and methods to optimize their deployment to ensure maximizing the probability of detection of emissions, minimization of unmonitored areas and to provide the necessary hardware redundancy in the priority areas.