An End-to-end Optimized Cooperative Transmission Scheme for Virtual MIMO Sensor Networks

Energy-constrained wireless sensor networks require robust and energy-efficient wireless communication protocols to minimize the energy consumption as much as possible. Cooperative MIMO transmission is one of the new solutions to this problem. In this paper, we first analyze the energy efficiency of cooperative MIMO transmission with the consideration of the channel training overhead. Then, an energy-efficient cluster-based cooperative MIMO transmission scheme (ECCM) is proposed. An end-to-end optimization model is developed to find the optimum number of cooperative nodes, clusters and transmission rates. Simulation results show that tremendous energy saving is possible with judicious choice of designed protocol parameters even considering the local circuit energy cost and STBC training overhead