Energy-efficient cluster-based cooperative FEC in wireless networks

— In this paper, we introduce a novel link layer cooperation technique in noisy wireless networks to improve overall system throughput and reliability, and to reduce the cost of retransmission and energy consumption. Under a cluster-based network design, code combining [1] is used together with FEC to improve the link layer reliability. This approach is different from how code combining is used in the conventional hybrid ARQ, which is in a sequential way. The analytical results and the simulations show that with the cooperation of nodes in a clustering network, the link reliability will be greatly improved with the same power consumption. We also show that not only transmission power is greatly reduced, but also the aggregate power consumption for a successful transmission and reception. Moreover, a lower transmission power implies lower interference thus potentially increase the network capacity.