Optimal Power Consumption in Cooperative WSNs for a random Distance using a linear propagation model

Many challenges confront the wide deployment of wireless communications such as signal attenuation, fading and shadowing. Those problems are solved by adopting cooperative communication technique that mimics MIMO technology (virtual MIMO). Following MIMO, nodes act as if they have multiple antennas but actually they are not. While cooperative networks have solved many communication problems through acquiring diversity gain; other problems arise like power consumption which increases as the number of relays in those networks increases. It's not only the case, other trade-offs such as diversity gain and data rate also come into the seen. This paper discusses a proposed scenario for achieving the optimal power consumption in cooperative WSN by analyzing the suitable number of relays that can be used at random distances between source and destination following linear propagation model while considering both diversity gain and data rate. Results are compared with the simpler case of having the relays at fixed distances between the source and destination.