Analyzing the Reliability of Group Transmission in Wireless Sensor Network

Most previous models about wireless channels are mainly adopted to obtain average packet error rates or to generate artificial network traces. However, when we combine packet group transmission with error correcting mechanisms, the steady packet error rate (PER) is not accurate enough to depict the short-term error event. In this paper, we propose a Markov chain model for group transmission to indicate influences of group length N and initial channel state on transmission reliability. Based on the model, we prove that the difference between steady PER and packet error rate within a group (PERG) is O(1/N), which can be used to estimate group length under a certain error rate constraint. Finally, we apply the model to compare the multipath transmission with the single-path transmission, and investigate an extreme case where the multipath way is less reliable than the single-path way.