Application of error control codes (ECC) in ultra-low power RF transceivers

Wireless sensor networks provide the ability to gather and communicate critical environmental, industrial or security information to enable rapid responses to potential problems. The limited embedded battery life time requires ultra low power sensing, processing and communication systems. To achieve this goal, new approaches at the device, circuit, system and network level need to be pursued (Roundy et al., 2003). Adoption of error control codes (ECC) reduces the required transmit power for reliable communication, while increasing the processing energy of the encoding and decoding operations. This paper discusses the above trade off for systems with and without standard ECC, such as convolutional and Reed Solomon codes. The comparison of the required energy per bit, based on several implemented decoders, shows that the adoption of an ECC with simple decoding structures (such as Reed Solomon) is quite energy efficient. This has specially been observed for long distances.