Demodulator design for collaborative signal reinforcement in sensor networks

Nodes in sensor fields and in autonomous swarms of mobile robots need to communicate; this usually requires individual nodes to either consume a significant amount of energy, carefully position themselves, precisely align carrier phase, or use complex coding. The paper proposes allowing multiple ind...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Fleming, T.B., Athanas, P.M.
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Subjects:
Array signal processing
Broadcasting
Collaboration
Demodulation
Frequency modulation
Mobile robots
Signal design
Transmitters
Wireless sensor networks
Online Access:Request full text
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Summary:Nodes in sensor fields and in autonomous swarms of mobile robots need to communicate; this usually requires individual nodes to either consume a significant amount of energy, carefully position themselves, precisely align carrier phase, or use complex coding. The paper proposes allowing multiple independent and mobile wireless transmitters to share the power-consumption burden by combining low-power transmissions into a unified higher-power transmission. This is not a distributed beamforming or space-time coding approach. Instead, all nodes simultaneously broadcast the same symbol on the same channel without using different code books and without aligning carriers. This paper briefly describes a modulation scheme (random-phase frequency shift keying, RPFSK), a synchronization scheme (Ensemble), and a node selection scheme which make this possible. It then describes an RPFSK demodulator design in detail for Ensemble nodes. It also covers both baseband and over-the-air test results.
ISSN:1091-0050
1558-058X
DOI:10.1109/SECON.2007.342871