Power allocation for virtual MISO cooperative communication in wireless sensor networks

Energy efficiency is an important factor for the deployment of wireless sensor networks. Cooperative communication can help to reduce energy consumption for long distance data transmission. This paper examines the optimal power allocation scheme for cooperative communication using Alamouti code in wireless sensor networks. The proposed power allocation scheme minimizes the total transmit power of two cooperative transmit nodes for a given bit error rate (BER) performance. The optimal transmit power can be approximated in analytical way and matches well with the precise result.