Power and Energy Consumption for Multi-Hop Protocols: A Sensor Network Point of View

Information theoretic approaches often investigate power consumption of mobile nodes in wireless multi-hop networks. In high data rate systems high spectral efficiencies are required to transmit data at a given bandwidth. On the other hand, bandwidth efficiency is not very important in low data rate networks, namely sensor networks. Here, the design criterium number one is energy efficiency, as the nodes are battery operated. Using known results from information theory, we investigate power consumption in multi-hop networks with simple protocols. Moreover we bridge the gap between power consumption and energy consumption and propose a model for the relation between those. Applying real-world radio chips the analysis combines theoretical and practical approaches. We show what transmission distance has to be exceeded to make multi-hop more energy efficient than direct transmission.