Energy efficiency of collaborative communication with imperfect phase synchronization and Rayleigh fading in wireless sensor networks

In this paper it is presented that significant power gain can be accomplished using collaborative communication, despite of imperfect phase synchronization over the Rayleigh fading channel. This paper presents an energy consumption model for the considered collaborative communication system with imperfect phase synchronization and channel fading. With this model, it is easy to find that, as the number of collaborative sensor nodes increases, notable power can be saved from the data transmission at the expense of increased circuit power. Hence, an energy saving model is defined to study the trade-off between the data transmission power gain and required circuit power. The presented numerical results use parameters taking values from the off-the-shelf products. It is shown that significant energy can be saved using collaborative communication as compared to SISO (Single input single output) communication when the transmission distance is greater than the break-even distance.