Performance analysis of energy efficient asymmetric coding and modulation schemes for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless Sensor Networks generally operate under severe energy constraints. In many cases, the networks are star connected with battery-powered nodes sensing data and sending it to a centrally-powered base station, whose energy constraints are more fore-bearing than that of the nodes. In this paper, an approach for energy efficient communication by using different channel codes on the base-station to node link (downlink) and node to base-station link (uplink) is proposed and analysed for such a network topology. This is in effect shifting complexity from the node to the base station while continuing to have the same BER performance. Also the use of more energy efficient modulation schemes are explored.