Energy‐efficient data transmission technique for wireless sensor networks based on DSC and virtual MIMO

In a wireless sensor network (WSN), the data transmission technique based on the cooperative multiple‐input multiple‐output (CMIMO) scheme reduces the energy consumption of sensor nodes quite effectively by utilizing the space‐time block coding scheme. However, in networks with high node density, the scheme is ineffective due to the high degree of correlated data. Therefore, to enhance the energy efficiency in high node density WSNs, we implemented the distributed source coding (DSC) with the virtual multiple‐input multiple‐output (MIMO) data transmission technique in the WSNs. The DSC‐MIMO first compresses redundant source data using the DSC and then sends it to a virtual MIMO link. The results reveal that, in the DSC‐MIMO scheme, energy consumption is lower than that in the CMIMO technique; it is also lower in the DSC single‐input single‐output (SISO) scheme, compared to that in the SISO technique at various code rates, compression rates, and training overhead factors. The results also indicate that the energy consumption per bit is directly proportional to the velocity and training overhead factor in all the energy saving schemes.