The Distance-Power Consumption Tradeoff with the Optimal Number of Relays for Cooperative Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Cooperative communication is known for its various advantages, such as robust to fading, improved diversity gains, capacity gains and increased power consumption performance. It allows for the achievement of effects of the virtual MIMO, so that diversity gain can be obtained from just merely one antenna for each node. However, conventional cooperative communication has low data rates when diversity gain increases. If we do not consider diversity gain to avoid this, we cannot achieve diversity gain. In addition, increasing the number of relays makes networks consume more power. This is one of the most important issues that increase power consumption performance in terms of WSN. Therefore, we propose an appropriate scenario which would increase the number of relays for optimal power consumption in a Wireless Sensor Network in consideration of the data rate, studying the tradeoff between distance (from Source to Destination) and power consumption to determine the optimal power consumption for a network.