Low-Energy Selective Cooperative Diversity with ARQ for Wireless Image Sensor Networks

Wireless Image Sensor Network (WISN) is a type of sensor network, which has the ability of capturing, processing and transmitting images from a monitored environment. The need to improve the performance of such systems can be attained by using the Selective Cooperative diversity with ARQ (SCA) technique, which is basically a cross-layer design that combines Truncated ARQ at the link layer and cooperative diversity at the physical layer. In addition, the LEACH protocol has the advantage of utilizing randomized rotation of local cluster-heads to evenly distribute the energy load among the sensors in the network. This paper proposes an integrated system, SCA with LEACH, and evaluates its performance with LEACH with Truncated ARQ system. A comparison is obtained based on network lifetime, under varying propagation scenarios, and on the quality of transmitted images in a WISN, using both techniques. Simulation results show an improved performances for the proposed system.