Cooperative communication based access technique for sensor networks

The collaboration of users in communication systems is defined as cooperative communication. The cognitive radio, i.e. dynamic spectrum access technique, is a wireless communication technology that provides a great chance for unlicensed users to exploit the frequency bands in an opportunistic way. A wireless sensor network is a widely used communication technology composing of spatially distributed independent sensors in order to monitor physical or environmental circumstances. In this work, a new technique that unlicensed users become a cooperative relay when they are in idle mode is proposed. Along with the proposed technique, unlicensed users help sensor nodes as a cooperative relay when they are in idle mode. Similarly, sensor nodes help unlicensed users for detecting idle frequency bands while in sleep mode. By preventing any disruption that remote users may be exposed owing to signal attenuation, the proposed cooperative relay utilises amplify and forward based cooperative communication protocol. Thanks to this approach; the overall network has greater performance than wireless sensor network that does not use cooperative communication based dynamic access technique in terms of throughput, energy, and delay.WOS:0004739160000012-s2.0-8506849990