A statistical analysis of interference and effective deployment strategies for facility-specific wireless sensor networks

Sensors are essential to industrial automation as they provide vital links between control systems and the physical world. Recently, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) attract more attention as they become feasible solutions for facility management. Unlike simulated environments, however, there are challenges in developing reliable WSNs for monitoring real facilities, including reduced accuracy, reliability and performance due to unpredictable interferences. This paper investigates deployment of automation facility-specific WSNs, called facility sensor networks (FSNs). First, interferences at multiple sensing nodes are analyzed to see if FSNs are vulnerable to interference. Second, interference sources are identified by applying statistical methods to collected data, in order to find the appropriate FSN configuration. Finally, an interference model is proposed to obtain optimal deployment strategies that minimize influence of interference. The strategy yields the lowest interference level compared to others. The results also suggest the appropriate number of sensors to be deployed.