The Effects of Weather Conditions on Data Transmission in Free Space for Wireless Sensor Networks

It is necessary to collect data measured in open lands, whether for example for monitoring purposes or for border protection. The process of data transmission from active nodes and its next level to the cluster head (CH), followed by follow-up to arrive at the base station (BS), with safety and acceptability, are the main objectives of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The key benefits of wireless systems are low-cost system installation and loss-free data transfer. Weather conditions in the spacious area affect wireless data transmission that is done between sensor nodes in free space. This study attempted to ascertain the influence of atmospheric and meteorological conditions on the loss of data when utilizing the wireless data transmission systems in a wireless sensor network. For this reason, the volume of data transfer losses that happen in free space because of three types of weather conditions is the main discussion point. The meteorological criteria that can be considered in this research are temperature, clear weather, dust, and rain as the weather elements that affect the Iraqi climate. The correlation analysis's outcomes show that the amount of precipitation and the size of raindrops have a main effect on the losses of data transmission. From a practical point of view, there is no confirmed statistical evidence of the amount of loss in the volume of transmitted data as a result of the amount of rainfall with the use of different transmission frequencies. In this research, we designed an objective routing protocol called Fuzzy Clustering with Ant Colony System FCACS, which has been utilized as a simulation program using the MATLAB 2018b application. The practical results of the proposed protocol for data transmission in free space and under different weather conditions were examined, and the simulation results were compared with those of two well-known routing protocols, which are DEEC and Z-SEP. In terms of the quantity of data received from the CH or BS and for the various weather circumstances that were suggested in the simulation, the proposed protocol demonstrated a high level of performance. Through the practical results linked to the energy dissipation for the three routing protocols, it is obvious that sending data via WSN consumes high energy in the case of rainy weather.