On the energy efficiency of some cooperative and non-cooperative transmission schemes in WSNs

In this paper we compare the energy efficiency of single-hop, multi-hop, selective decode-and-forward and incremental decode-and-forward in wireless sensor networks. The system is constrained by maximum packet loss and end-to-end throughput requirements. For meeting the end-to-end throughput requirement, we assume that the nodes in multi-hop and cooperative transmission schemes operate at a spectral efficiency which is twice that of the single-hop transmission. Our analysis includes the energy consumption of the RF circuitry and contradicts some previous results in the literature, showing that the cooperative transmission may be considerably more energy efficient than the non-cooperative transmission even in small transmission ranges, specially if a feedback channel is available.