Cooperative transmission in wireless sensor networks: Power attenuation vs link scheduling

We focus on the cooperative link scheduling problem and battery power attenuation in wireless sensor networks. Because recently a technical report on the development of battery has indicated that a linear attenuation can be maintained well. Therefore, linear function will be modeled to explore the influence of power attenuation in this paper, while four link scheduling strategies are considered. We shall employ the Markov Chain to investigate the channel utilization efficiency, which is taken as a measurement on the performance of the link scheduling strategies under the influence of power attenuation. Some comparisons are analyzed in theory and simulation results show that power attenuation causes a half down of the occupation ratio and over 20 percent loss of channel utilization efficiency, which has little dependence on the link scheduling strategies.