Reliable data transmission in wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor networks are a class of distributed systems that are the integral part of the physical space they inhabit. Unlike most of computers, which work primarily with the data collected by human, sensor networks rely on the nodes present within that network. In order to provide a reliable and efficient transmission using a WSN, it is essential that the energy consumed for the transmission is as less as possible. This is because the nodes operate on batteries and hence the energy consumed must be less so that the lifetime of the nodes are increased. Various transmission techniques were proposed to reduce the energy consumption in a WSN. The three most popular techniques are SISO, MISO and MEMO. One such technique to reduce the energy consumed by the network is to make use of cooperative communication. By the use of cooperative communication, where many number of nodes (called cooperative nodes) are used to transmit the same data to the destination along with the source node, the total energy required for transmission is reduced when compared to other techniques. The total energy comprises of two types: broadcasting energy also known as local distance transmission and cooperative transmission also known as long-haul communication. The number of cooperative nodes plays a major role in the long-haul transmission. And also the transmission energy can also be reduced by determining the optimised E2E probability. Thus the overall transmission energy can be reduced by determining two parameters: 1. The number of cooperatives nodes required to perform cooperative communication; 2). The optimised E2E probability value.