Linear and Planar Antenna Array in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networking (WSN) is a relatively new field of research with many applications, both military and commercial. In the military applications, WSNs could be used in hostile environments to minimize the need for human presence. A WSN consists of a large number of small sensor nodes that are deployed in an area of interest for collecting information. A subgroup of nodes then collaborate their transmissions to achieve beamforming. The information collected by the WSN is relayed to an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which is synchronized with the transmission beam of the network. In this study, the positioning of the nodes in a WSN is investigated with the main object to propose a method to find the best combination of nodes for beamforming given a random distribution in the sensor field. Additionally, the method is expandable in two dimensions and capable of forming a planar antenna array which will improve the beamforming gain. A simulation model was developed in MATLAB code to study the formation of linear and planar antenna array of nodes. The existing iterative technique in the formation of a linear antenna array is compared with the proposed and the results showed an improvement in linearity.