Bit-error-rate Performance Improvement in Wireless Multi-hop Ad Hoc Networks using Route Diversity Considerations

Multi-hop multi-route networks are promising candidate for achieving the high channel capacity. The networks have high applicability to various new communications. Especially sensor networks are one of the attractive applications of the multihop multi-route networks. When the signals are transmitted over multiple routes, a route diversity effect would be possible. The effect can help to prevent performance degradation caused by quality loss of every route. Forward error correction schemes and turbo coding can be expected to enhance the route diversity. As it would be well known, a turbo encoder generates one message stream and two parity streams and the message stream is more important than the parity streams for reliable communications. Thus by allocating the message stream to a reliable route, the performance degradation could be prevented. In this paper, we examine the effect of the route diversity on multi-hop networks using turbo codes. The diversity effect against the quality loss of the multiple routes is investigated. The results suggest that the multi-route transmissions have high diversity effect. They also suggest that large performance degradation can be prevented by appropriate route assignment of the streams even though the link quality of the multiple routes can not be guaranteed.