Energy Efficient Virtual MIMO for Cognitive Radio Sensor Networks

In Cognitive Radio Sensor Networks (CRSN), sensors can access the channel randomly due to its spectrum sensing ability. However, frequent channel switching during random access will cause packet collision thus increase the energy consumption. In order to reduce the frequency for channel switching, we propose a novel comprehensive optimal cooperative routing algorithm (COCRA) based on virtual MIMO (multiple input multiple output) and virtual sinks. In our schema, channel conditions of virtual sinks combing with residual energy and distance of a source node are all considered to reduce the energy consumption of random channel transition between source nodes and sink. Simulation results show that COCRA with VMIMO offers considerable improvements in energy efficiency.