Performance analysis of STBC encoded cooperative MIMO system for wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks consist of sensor nodes with sensing and communication capabilities. As sensor nodes are generally battery-powered devices, the critical aspects to face concern how to reduce the energy consumption of nodes, so that the network life time can be increased to reasonable times. The efficiency of space-time block code-encoded (STBC) cooperative transmission is studied. An energy-efficient virtual multiple-input multiple-output (MEMO) communication architecture based on V-BLAST receiver processing is proposed for energy-constrained, distributed wireless sensor networks. Numerical results show that significant energy saving are offered by the proposed virtual MEMO architecture in distributed wireless sensor networks. Cooperation protocol with low overhead is proposed, and synchronization requirements among cooperating sensors are discussed. Energy efficiency is analyzed as a trade-off between the reduced transmission energy consumption and the increased electronic and overhead energy consumption. Simulations show that with proper design, cooperative transmission can enhance energy efficiency and prolong sensor network lifetime. Simulation results are included.