BCH coding and multi-hop communication in wireless sensor networks

In this paper, we examine some of the challenges concerning error correction and multi-hop communication in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). We consider Bose, Chaudhuri and Hoquenghem (BCH) codes with different codeword lengths and error correction capabilities. In contrast with previous works, that implement coding algorithm in hardware and consequently used hardware energy profiling, in this work we consider a more realistic assumption that the node's mu-processor performs coding and energy consumption of decoding is measured using JouleTrack. Energy efficiency is used as the performance metric for communication and the interaction of multi-hop communication and coding is investigated. Simulation results show that communicating long packets is more energy efficient. If communication is multi-hop with sufficient number of hops, then, the uncoded system is beneficial. However, coding is inevitable in the case where intermediate nodes, when needed, are not available