An energy-efficient virtual V-BLAST transmission scheme for cluster-based wireless sensor networks

Wireless sensor network is a promising technique in the near future, but energy-constrained characteristic of sensor nodes is one of the key issues that we must consider in designing. In this paper, a cluster-based virtual V-BLAST transmission scheme is proposed for energy-constrained wireless sensor networks. Compared to previous work, there are two new aspects in this scheme. Firstly, the proposed scheme makes use of multiple cluster heads simultaneous transmission instead of single one. Secondly, the receiver-side V-BLAST processing is incorporated into the original LEACH protocol. In addition, an analysis model based on energy consumption of the whole network is developed to find the optimum parameter for the scheme. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme is more energy-efficient when compared to the original LEACH protocol.