An Online Quantitative Measure of Density for Low-Power IoT Networks

Abstract: Low-Power Internet-of-Things (LPIoT) networks are formed by a massive number of power-constrained devices that use short-range wireless technologies to communicate. In the next years, the density of LPIoT networks tends to grow due to the low price of the IoT devices and the popularity of the IoT applications, which includes smart-home, building-monitoring, and smart-cities. Despite being a critical feature, often it is not clear how network density can be expressed in quantifiable terms. This letter proposes DENSity indeX (DENX), which is a measure for the density of LPIoT networks. DENX has been designed, implemented, and evaluated as an IoT platform tool to provide an online and fine-grained measure of density.