Energy Efficiency Analysis of Some Cooperative and Non-Cooperative Transmission Schemes in Wireless Sensor Networks

We compare the energy efficiency of some transmission schemes in wireless sensor networks. By constraining the system to end-to-end throughput requirements, we assume that the nodes in multi-hop and cooperative schemes operate at a spectral efficiency which is twice that of the single-hop transmission. By taking into account the energy consumption of the RF circuitry, we show that cooperation may be considerably more energy efficient than non-cooperative schemes even in small transmission ranges, specially if a feedback channel is available.