Energy-Efficiency of Cooperative Communication with Guaranteed E2E Reliability in WSNs

Abstract

This paper addresses the energy efficiency of cooperative communication in WSN. We first establish the energy model of single-hop WSN. It is found that the cooperative communication is more suitable for harsh transmission environment with long-haul distance. The energy consumption per bit is numerically minimized by finding the optimal broadcasting BER and the number of cooperative nodes. Then, we expand the conclusion to the multihop scenario where “energy hole” dominates the longevity of WSN. To mitigate the energy consumption in the hotspots, as well as to keep the promised reliability, we adjust the transmission BER of the clusters according to the hops between the sink and cluster. On one hand, the statistical reliability is met. On the other hand, the energy consumed is converted from the nearer cluster (from the sink) to the farther ones. The network lifetime is thus optimized.