Effect of antennas correlation on the performance of MIMO systems in wireless sensor network

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) has been proved to be a path breaking technique for increasing capacity and reliability of a wireless communication system and has been adopted in most emerging wireless systems. To achieve the promised gain from MIMO, the antennas at transmitter or receiver are required to be separated by a minimum distance dependent on wavelength. Owing to the large physical size of traditional copper antennas, it is not possible to integrate them on tiny sensors with the required physical separation. The diversity technique if applied in wireless sensor network has potential to improve reliability as well as reduce power consumption. However, the traditional antennas are not suitable for placement on sensor nodes. This paper presents an analysis and performance results of MIMO with correlated antennas on sensor nodes of wireless sensor network.