Efficient Real-time Transmission Research Articles

Reliable and efficient real-time transmission is an important and challenging issue for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Truncated retransmission times and relay selection can effectively reduce transmission delay and improve system throughput. A new direct multisource multirelay cooperative automatic repeat request (D-MSMR-CARQ) protocol based on truncation with two relay selection methods in WSNs is analytically analyzed in this paper. Firstly, based on two different relay selection methods under the maximum ratio combining (MRC), the discrete time Markov chain (DTMC) model of D-MSMR-CARQ protocol and state space is established. Secondly, for each D-MSMR-CARQ protocol based on different relay selection method, we obtain the closed-form expressions of the system average transmission delay and the expressions of the system throughput through state transition probabilities. Finally, numerical results reveal that the first relay selection method outperforms the second relay selection method on the average transmission delay performance for the proposed protocol. More specifically, the delay performance of the proposed protocol can be improved by 13% compared with the nondirect-link protocol when the channel environment is the same; the proposed protocol improves the throughput performance by 47% compared with the nondirect protocol when the channel environment is harsh under the same simulation parameters. Furthermore, the optimal number of source nodes and relay nodes is determined.