Energy efficiency of nonbinary network-coded cooperation

Abstract

In this chapter, an energy efficiency analysis is performed in a wireless sensor network setup considering different communication schemes, including direct non-cooperative transmission, decoded-and-forward cooperation, and network-coded cooperation. The analysis is performed considering Nakagami-m block fading, so that the influence of some line-of-sight is taken into account, while the effect of the circuitry power consumption is also considered. The theoretical and numerical results show that the use of network coding can be considerably beneficial in terms of energy efficiency and that there exists an optimal number of cooperating nodes that minimizes the energy consumption for a given distance. With network coding and with an appropriate organization of cooperating nodes into clusters, the energy efficiency is maximized, leading to energy savings of an order of magnitude with respect to the direct non-cooperative transmission.