Cross-layer multirate interaction with distributed source coding in wireless sensor networks

Distributed Source Coding (DSC) is an effective means in reducing data redundancy in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). However, the issues on designing multirate DSC with multirate transmission in WSNs have not been well addressed in the literature. In this paper, we propose a cross-layer approach to achieve optimal DSC data quality while assuring energy efficiency and latency requirement through adjusting multirate DSC data dependencies and network multirate transmission parameters jointly. Specifically, the DSC coding dependency among multirate source coding sensors are fine-tuned to balance compression efficiency and transmission robustness. Transmission rate and retransmission limit on each wireless link are optimized accordingly to achieve Unequal Error Protection (UEP) among inter-dependent DSC streams. Simulation studies demonstrate that the proposed scheme ensures satisfactory DSC data quality and energy efficiency.