Energy Efficient Probabilistic Switching ON–OFF Operation in Multiantenna Cooperative Wireless Sensor Networks

The effective deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) applications such as smart cities, smart farming and smart transport systems must ensure the network robustness, scalability and longevity. Therefore, guaranteeing the successful delivery of information and extending the lifetime of the nodes that make up a wireless sensor network (WSN) are two essential aspects for IoT applications. This work evaluates the performance of a cooperative WSN by adopting two multiantenna schemes: antenna selection (AS) and beamforming transmission using the singular value decomposition (SVD) technique. In addition, cooperation is established according to an ON–OFF probability, so that the RF receiving circuits of the relays are activated in a probabilistic way, aiming at reducing the energy consumption of the sensors, extending their useful lifetime. Our main goal is to increase the amount of information effectively transmitted by the network, keeping an outage probability constraint. The results show that, when both techniques are used, there is a significant gain in the amount of information effectively transmitted by the network, with emphasis on the AS scheme at short transmission distances. By increasing the number of antennas, it was found that a lower ON–OFF probability is required, i.e., a trade-off is established between the nodes’ hardware complexity and their need for cooperation.