Collaborative beamforming for wireless sensor networks with sector-based node selection

Due to the characteristic of collaborative beamforming, more than one node will be used to form the beampatten. Although the more nodes are selected the better beampattern can be formed, it also means more energy will be consumed. Considering the scarcity of energy in wireless ad-hoc network, the number of collaborative nodes must be controlled. It is necessary to select some of them to form the pattern on condition that the SNR requirement in the destination is satisfied. On the other hand, different node topology will lead to different beampattern, it is interesting to find out which nodes can form a better beampattern. In this paper, a new sector-based node selection approach for collaborative beamforming is presented. It is shown that for a uniformly distributed WSN, when the nodes are selected from a set of sector regions, the resulting beampattern mainlobe is narrower and sidelobe is lower compared to those of the classical CB technique. Furthermore, combining with the ring-based selection approach, the sector-based selection approach will get a much better performance.