An improved opportunistic packet transmission scheme for wireless sensor networks

In this paper, we consider a wireless sensor network in a single cell architecture, where a single hop between sensor nodes and central controller node exists. We propose a new medium access control (MAC) protocol and packet transmission scheme between sensor nodes with single antenna and central controller node with multiple antennas. Our scheme is an extension to previous work proposed by Coronel et al. [In Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Communications, Vol. 2, pp. 1082–1086, 2005] for wireless sensor networks. Unlike previous approach, enabling the use of the multi-user diversity based on normalized signal to noise ratio, we aim to increase throughput and energy efficiency in the system by increasing the received packets and reducing collisions. The throughput performance of the suggested scheme is compared through Monte Carlo simulations for frequency flat Rayleigh slow fading channel model.