Channel coding study for ultra-low power wireless design of autonomous sensor works

Ultra-low power wireless design is highly demanded for building up autonomous wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for many application areas. To keep certain quality of service with limited power budget, channel coding techniques can be applied to maintain the robustness and reliability of WSNs. In this paper, suitable channel coding schemes are studied for WSNs based on noncoherent on-off keying modulation. According to theoretical capacity investigations, pulse-position modulation (PPM) and Reed Solomon coded PPM are proposed as channel coding schemes to realize autonomous WSNs in practice. Moreover, to avoid amplitude saturation in the receiver, overlap multi-pulse PPM coding schemes are also studied. Simulation and emulation results both illustrate that the transmit power of sensors can be reduced dramatically by using the proposed schemes in comparison with the uncoded system.