Energy Aware Error Control in Cooperative Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract: Due to small size of sensor nodes deployed in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), energy utilization is a key issue. Poor channel conditions lead to retransmissions and hence, result in energy wastage. Error control strategies are usually utilized to accommodate channel impairments like noise and fading in order to optimize energy consumption for network lifetime enhancement. Meanwhile, cooperative communication also emerges to be an appropriate candidate to combat the effects of channel fading. Energy efficiency of cooperative scheme when applied with Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ), Hybrid-ARQ (HARQ) and Forward Error Correction (FEC) is investigated in this work. Moreover, the expressions for energy efficiency of Direct Transmission, Single Relay Cooperation and Multi Relay Cooperation are also derived. In all, our work is focused towards energy optimal communication in WSNs. Our results show that error control strategies with cooperative schemes can significantly enhance system performance in form of energy optimization.