REIHE INFORMATIK TR-2006-005 The Impact of Forward Error Correction on Wireless Sensor Network Performance

In networks there are basically two methods to tackle the problem of erroneous packets: Automatic Repeat Requests (ARQ) and Forward Error Correction (FEC). While ARQ means packet retransmissions, FEC uses additional bits to detect and correct distorted data. However, extensive field test of our sensor nodes have shown that FEC can take effect only as long as both sender and receiver are bit-wise synchronized. Otherwise, all following bits are misinterpreted which results in an uncorrectable number of errors. We will thus introduce a new resync scheme which is particularly tailored for many sensor network platforms using UARTs in conjunction with radio transmission. We can show that only using an appropriate resync mechanism exploits the full potential of FEC.