A Cooperative MIMO Framework for Wireless Sensor Networks

We explore the use of cooperative multi-input multi-output (MIMO) communications to prolong the lifetime of a wireless sensor network (WSN). Single-antenna sensor nodes are clustered into virtual antenna arrays that can act as virtual MIMO (VMIMO) nodes. We design a distributed cooperative clustering protocol (CCP), which exploits VMIMO's diversity gain by optimally selecting the cooperating nodes (CNs) within each cluster and balancing their energy consumption. The problem of optimal CN selection at the transmit and receive clusters is formulated as a nonlinear binary program. Aiming at minimizing the imbalance in the residual energy at various nodes, we decompose this problem into two subproblems: finding the optimal number of CNs (ONC) in a cluster and the CN assignment problem. For the ONC problem, we first analyze the energy efficiency of two widely used VMIMO methods: distributed Space Time Block Code (DSTBC) and distributed Vertical-Bell Laboratories-Layered-Space-Time (DVBLAST). Our analysis provides an upper bound on the optimal number of CN nodes, which greatly reduces the computational complexity of the ONC problem. The second subproblem is addressed by assigning CNs based on the residual battery energy. To make CCP scalable to large WSNs, we propose a multihop energy-balanced routing mechanism for clustered WSNs (C-EBR) with a novel cost metric. Finally, we derive sufficient conditions on the intra- and intercluster ranges, under which CCP guarantees connectivity of the intercluster topology. Extensive simulations show that the proposed approach dramatically improves the network lifetime.