An Efficient Index-Modulation-Based Data Gathering Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks

Decision gathering in cluster-based Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) plays an important role in the overall performance of WSNs employed for target detection applications. Recently, a novel decision gathering scheme has been proposed that relies on the Index Modulation (IM) concept, called IM-based WSN (IM-WSN). It achieves a significant improvement in the decision error rate accompanied with a high computational complexity as compared to the literature. In this letter, following the same principle of the IM-WSN scheme, an efficient decision gathering scheme is proposed, which is able to significantly reduce the computational complexity and improve the decision error rate. The performance of the proposed scheme is analyzed through a solid mathematical framework that is validated by simulation results.