Virtual MIMO-based wireless sensor networks using LDPC codes

Energy conservation in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) is one of the primary performance parameters. In this paper, an energy-efficient virtual multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication architecture based on distributed source coding (DSC) is proposed for energy-constrained, distributed wireless sensor networks. Low density parity check (LDPC) code is one of the practical codes that can be used for DSC to compress close to Slepian-Wolf limit. Simulation results show that employing DSC by using a LDPC code with length 1000 and compression ratio of R=3/5 in a virtual MIMO-based WSN achieves better energy efficiency compared to that of a virtual MIMO-based communication system without DSC.