Multihop Performance of Cooperative Preamble Sampling MAC(CPS-MAC) in Wireless Sensor Networks

Cooperative communication(CC) is a promising technique to combat fading in a wireless environment. In our previous work, we proposed Cooperative Preamble Sampling(CPS)-Medium Access Control(MAC) protocol which highlighted the benefits of using CC in Wireless Sensor Networks(WSN). Initially, CPS-MAC performance was evaluated in a 3-node network comprising a single source, partner, and destination node. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of CPS-MAC in a multihop WSN configuration, where a large number of sensor nodes are deployed around a sink to create a data gathering network. All nodes generate traffic, which leads to channel contention, collisions, and idle listening. Results show that, under light traffic load, CPS-MAC performs on par with non-cooperative preamble sampling protocol and performs significantly higher as traffic load increases.