Choosing optimum noise figure and data rate in wireless sensor network radio transceivers

To reduce the energy consumption in wireless sensor network transceivers, we propose an approach which combines two tradeoffs. The first tradeoff is between the receiver sensitivity and transmitter output power. The second one is the duty cycle and data rate of the transceiver. The combined approach gives us the optimum choice of noise figure and data rate for a given application and transceiver architecture. Considering a typical transceiver architecture and perfectly synchronized system, we show that the energy consumption can indeed be reduced with this approach compared to choosing either data rate or noise figure arbitrarily. Moreover, in case of a wakeup receiver architecture and slot based MAC protocol, applying this method, we show that there is a different combination of optimum data rate and noise figure value for the wakeup receivers to minimize the wakeup energy.