Effect of hamming coding on WSN lifetime and throughput

Wireless Sensor Networks has become an attractive field of research due to its wide range of applications. This paper focuses on improving network throughput without affecting the lifetime. It shows that the use of the Hamming code has a negligible effect on network lifetime irrespective of the SNR. In contrast, the CRC with retransmissions reduces the lifetime by 37.3% compared to the uncoded system. It is also proven that using the Hamming code increases system throughput when compared to the use of CRC. High-rate Hamming codes have a higher throughput than low-rate Hamming codes over network lifetime. Both AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels are considered. If the Network Master is used as a repeater, it is found that this generally increases network lifetime. Furthermore, at low SNR, system throughput in the case of high-rate Hamming codes is increased. The above results are shown both for fixed data and fixed frame schemes.