The effect of fading on the achievable rate of cooperative sensor networks with misinformed sensors

Communication from a cooperative sensor network to a mobile access point is considered in this paper. Sensors are assumed to be informed with a global message and some nodes are misinformed with random messages. The multiple access channel is i.i.d. fading and the realization of the channel state is known to the access point only. An achievable rate is derived for the information retrieval process when multiple sensors are activated at a time. For a Gaussian multiple access channel under a total network power constraint, the optimal number of simultaneous transmissions is investigated under three fading scenarios: non-fading, unit-gain, and Rayleigh-fading. With Gaussian code books, the optimal number of simultaneous transmissions varies in the three fading environments.