Title: Cascade decode-and-forward: spatial diversity reuse in sensor networks

Authors: Siyi Wang; Weisi Guo; Amir Jafari

Addresses: Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou 215123 China; Institute for Telecommunications Research, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, SA 5095, Australia ' School of Engineering, The University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK ' Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S1 3JD, UK; Bell Laboratories, Alcatel-Lucent, Republic of Ireland

Abstract: In this paper, we consider a wireless sensor network that involves data transmitted through multiple relays to reach a destination. In particular we improve the decode-and-forward cooperative relaying scheme, by proposing the Cascade-Decode-and-Forward scheme, where the number of successful relays increases with each additional cooperation stage. The achieved effect is a cascade of relays that contribute towards achieving full spatial diversity at the destination. A relationship between the achievable bit error rate and delay is derived for the proposed scheme. The results show that for a small delay constraint, the scheme can achieve full diversity. As the delay constraint increases, the protocol can achieve full diversity at signals levels 10-100 orders magnitude lower than the decode-and-forward protocol. The proposed protocol can dynamically trade-off transmission reliability with delay and a certain node connectivity density is required to achieve a cascading cooperation chain with an arbitrary low data extinction probability.

Keywords: cascading cooperation; multi-hop; multiple relays; wireless sensor networks; WSNs; cascade decode-and-forward; spatial diversity reuse; bit error rate; BER; delay; transmission reliability; node connectivity density.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNET.2016.076717

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2016 Vol.20 No.4, pp.219 - 229

Accepted: 18 Feb 2015
Published online: 23 May 2016 *

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