An Energy-Efficient Adaptive Transmission Protocol for Ultrawideband Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

An energy-efficient adaptive transmission protocol for ultrawideband (UWB) wireless sensor networks (WSNs), called ATP-UWSN, is described and evaluated over time-varying multipath fading channel conditions and multinode interference. Since wireless channels may greatly change from one transmission to the next, the use of fixed transmission parameters for such channels results in wasted energy when channel conditions are good. Adaptation of transmission parameters reduces energy consumption and interference. The proposed ATP-UWSN permits each of the sensor nodes to adapt its code rate and spreading code length (the number of pulses used per data bit) to match the predicted channel-state information (CSI). The transmission parameters are selected in accordance with the predicted CSI characteristics of the communication links in the network to achieve the desired quality of service given by the target bit-error probability. Subsequently, we develop a mathematical adaptation framework for the analytical evaluation of ATP-UWSN. Communication performance is evaluated in terms of average information throughput efficiency, which is a relevant progress-related measure for multi- hop WSNs that is associated with the energy consumption and throughput of a packet transmission. The analytical expression of this performance metric is defined and is used to assess the benefits of the proposed ATP-UWSN when compared with a nonadaptive transmission protocol (NATP) with fixed transmission parameters. Our results show that the ATP-UWSN outperforms the NATP and can improve the robustness of the link and reduce energy consumption by adapting the transmission parameters in response to changes in the predicted CSI.