A Virtual MIMO Communication Strategy Based on Cooperative Groups for Wireless Sensor Networks

As we all know, virtual MIMO technology is an efficient way for energy saving in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The present virtual MIMO communication strategies in WSNs depend on cluster heads collecting and forwarding source data, which causes big energy consumption. Aiming at this problem, we propose a new virtual-MIMO communication strategy based on cooperative group (CG) in this paper, called Group Collaboration MIMO (GCMIMO). GCMIMO clusters the WSN into several clusters. Each cluster is managed by two cluster heads, master cluster head (MCH) and vice cluster head (VCH). MCH divides the source nodes into several cooperative groups, every two nodes as a group. A CG can constitute a virtual dual-antenna transmitter for sending source data of both nodes directly. VCH and MCH are always seen as a CG, called master cooperative group (MCG), which can receive and forward the data from CGs of other clusters. Unlike the existing virtual MIMO communication strategy, GCMIMO doesn’t require the cluster heads collecting the data of the source nodes, which can reduce the times of source data transmission and improve the energy efficiency. In the simulation, we analyze the energy consumption in each communication phase of GCMIMO. The results indicate that GCMIMO can effectively decrease the energy consumption in data transmission and improve energy efficiency.