Performance and energy consumption analysis of 802.11 with FEC codes over wireless sensor networks

This paper expands an analytical performance model of 802.11 to accurately estimate throughput and energy demand of 802.11-based wireless sensor network (WSN) when sensor nodes employ Reed-Solomon (RS) codes, one of block forward error correction (FEC) techniques. This model evaluates these two metrics as a function of the channel bit error rate (BER) and the RS symbol size. Since the basic recovery unit of RS codes is a symbol not a bit, the symbol size affects the WSN performance even if each packet carries the same amount of FEC check bits. The larger size is more effective to recover long-lasting error bursts although it increases the computational complexity of encoding and decoding RS codes. For applying the extended model to WSNs, this paper collects traffic traces from a WSN consisting of two TIP50CM sensor nodes and measures its energy consumption for processing RS codes. Based on traces, it approximates WSN channels with Gilbert models. The computational analyses confirm that the adoption of RS codes in 802.11 significantly improves its throughput and energy efficiency of WSNs with a high BER. They also predict that the choice of an appropriate RS symbol size causes a lot of difference in throughput and power waste over short-term durations while the symbol size rarely affects the long-term average of these metrics.