Energy-based transmission strategy selection for wireless sensor networks

Energy efficiency is one of the most critical concerns for wireless sensor networks. While cooperative transmission strategies have the potential to significantly improve the system performance, they also incur additional energy cost and system overhead. In this paper, energy efficiency of relevant transmission strategies is studied both for wideband asymptotes and realistic system settings. Based on this analysis, general guidelines are presented for optimal transmission strategy selection in some typical scenarios, aiming at minimum energy consumption with a target BER. The proposed selection rules, especially those based on system-level metrics, are easy to implement for sensor applications. The framework provided here may also be readily extended to other scenarios or applications