On the Performance of Cooperative Transmission Schemes in

Commented [A1]: Please consider removing "On the" at the

Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks beginning of the title.

Abstract—This paper studies the performance of six transmission schemes, which aresuch as
Singlesingle-hop, Multimulti-hop, Selective selective Decodedecode-and-Forward forward
(SDF), Amplifyamplify-and-Forward forward (AF), Incremental incremental Decodedecode-
and-Forward forward (IDF), and Incremental incremental Amplifyamplify-and- Fforward (IAF)
schemes. For a fair comparison, these schemes are constrained by in terms of maximum outage Commented [A2]: Please verify this change.
probability and end-to-end throughput. In this paper, we investigate the impact of propagation
channel conditions, including both Lineline-Ofof-Sight sight (LOS) and Nonnon-Lineline-Ofof-
Sight sight (NLOS) environments, by exploiting Nakagami-m fading channel. Our simulation
results show that , by utilizing a return channel, the IDF and IAF cooperative schemes , utilizing
a return channel achieve better performance than the other schemes in most of the cases.
Keywords: Cooperative communication, Energy energy efficiency, Transmission transmission
power, Outage outage probability, Throughput throughput performance, Industrial industrial
wireless sensor networks.

I. INTRODUCTION
INDUSTRIAL Wireless wireless Sensor sensor Networks networks (IWSNs) has have gained a
lot ofmuch attention recently because ofowing to their low cost, small geometry, low heat
dissipation, and low low-power sensors [1]–[4]. These nodes are typically tiny, and compact, Commented [A3]: "Tiny" and "compact" are both referring to
small size. Please consider using only one of these words to avoid
and operation operated using battery sources. Nevertheless, industrial nodes indeed are required redundancy.
to be operated for years. In addition, the battery replacement is difficult or even impossible in
some cases. Furthermore, the computational capacity and wireless throughput gain have
significantly increased in the last decade, while whereas battery’s the capacity of batteries has
achieves achieved a modest increase [5]. Consequently, the demand for minimizing the energy
consumption is a serious concern in IWSNs due owing to both environmental and economical
motivations. The
performances of short-hop and long-hop routing strategies is were both analyzed in terms of
energy consumption under given stringent outage constraints in [6]. The authors inspected two
scenarios, i.e., deterministic line networks and 2-D networks. In each scenario, Caleb et al. [6]
considered three limiting cases where the target success probability goes toreached one, and the
number of hops for short-hop routing and the number of transmit antennae and/or receive
antennae goes toreached infinity. It is was shown revealed that short-hop routing is more energy
efficient than long-hop routing in the above limiting cases. Nevertheless, only an ideal power
model is was considered, in whichwherein the radio frequency (RF) circuit power consumption
is was neglected [6]–[12]. In this paperstudy, in order to overcome this limitation, the power
consumption of both transmission power and radio frequency (RF) systems power consumption
should be is jointly considered due owing to limited energy resources of industrial nodes to
obtain a real-world power consumption model. Besides, the overall energy consumption is
affected by multi-path fading in a harsh industrial environment. Thus, it leads to increasing
increased in energy consumption due owing to multiple retransmissions. Cooperative
communication has emerged as one of thea potential technique by exploiting the additional
spatial degrees of freedom to combat multi-path fading and increase energy efficiency because it
significantly enhances the signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio at the receiver if as compared to that of a
single antenna (single-input single-output, SISO) system. Commented [A4]: Please expand SISO here.
By exploiting the relay technique, spatial diversity can be achieved. The cooperative protocols
are defined based on the specific behavior of the relay nodes. For example, regarding in amplify-
and-forward (AF) strategy, the relay nodes simply amplify the signal received from the source
node at the first phase, then and subsequently forward the amplified version of the received
signal at the second phase. In the compress-and-forward (CF) protocol, the relay nodes compress
the received signal received from the source node, and forward it to the destination [13]. In
decode-and-forward scheme, the relay nodes decode the overheard signal from the source node
at the first time slot, re-encode, and forward the re-encoded version at the second time slot.
Laneman et al. [14] showed that Selective selective Decodedecode-and-Forward forward
protocol (SDF) outperforms outperformed the AF and DF transmission schemes. In the Selective
Decode-and- ForwardSDF scheme, the relay nodes forward the signal to the destination
whenever it is successfully decoded it from the source node. Otherwise, the source node will
retransmits the signal . Besides, the incremental decode-and-forward (IDF) protocol, which is a
variant of the DF protocol, is was also investigated in [14]. In the IDF protocol, the relay node
may overhear the signal which that is transmitted from the source node to the destination node
due owing to the broadcast nature of wireless medium. ThenSubsequently, the relay node only
forwards the frame at the second time slot in case of failure of decoding at the destination node.
This mechanism is provided by the feedback channel.

Thenceforward, various methods of relay strategies are were proposed to enhance the
cooperative network performance. Pham et al. [15] proposed a hybrid relay selection algorithm.
More specifically, the proposed scheme selects selected the best relay node and switches
switched between the two cooperative protocols, namely —AF and DF. Hence, the network can
bewas energy efficient, extended the network lifetime, and reduced the packet error rate. In [16],
an interference-limited relay selection algorithm for multi-hop wireless networks is was
proposed. The main idea is was to improve the packet dropped ratio and end-to-end delay by
combining the selection relaying and incremental cooperative relaying schemes. Consequently,
the proposed scheme outperforms outperformed the existing transmission schemes, namely —
best relay scheme [17] and conventional non-cooperative scheme [18]. However, the throughput
performance of the proposed cooperative algorithm is was missing not addressed in the above
cited works cited above.

MeanwhileFurther, cooperative hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) and conventional time-
diversity non-cooperative schemes are were both analyzed in [19]. Specifically, there are three
types of HARQ protocols [20]–[22]. Their analysis analyses shows showed that the cooperative
HARQ outperforms outperformed the non-cooperative scheme, which is assisted by multi-
retransmissions from the source node, in terms of energy efficiency. Incremental Decode-and-
Forward (IDF) and direct transmission schemes are were investigated in [23]. In the IDF
protocol, the relay node may overhear the signal which that is transmitted from the source node
to the destination node due owing to the broadcast nature of wireless medium.
ThenSubsequently, the relay node only forwards the frame at the second time slot in case of
failure of decoding at the destination from source node. This mechanism is provided by the Commented [A5]: This section is repeated from above. Please
ensure that this redudancy is avoided.
feedback channel. Moreover, the packet size and modulation level are jointly optimized in order
to achieve optimal energy efficiency. Their simulation results showed that the direct transmission
scheme is more energy efficient than the cooperative IDF protocol at short source–-destination
(S–-D) distances and a relay location which that is at the midpoint of the S–-D distance is the
best relay position to achieve energy efficiency gain.

Keeping Considering the earlier discussion in mind, in this paperstudy, we address these such
aforementioned shortcomings and analytically evaluate the energy consumption, transmission
power, throughput performance, and outage probability of the six transmission schemes, namely
—single-hop, multi-hop, selective decode-and- forwardSDF, incremental decode-and-
forwardIDF, amplify-and-forwardAF, and incremental amplify-and-forward (IAF). Our main
contributions are as follows:.

We explicitly present the performance comparison under NLOS and LOS environments while
satisfying the stringent outage requirement at the destination. Furthermore, the relay location is
also investigated on under these conditions. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, an LOS
environment has was been missingnot addressed in the aforementioned publications.

TIn order to maximize energy consumption savings, we minimize the transmission power of
each transmission scheme as since the internal hardware power consumption of the, i.e,
transmitter and receiver circuitry,circuitry is fixed. This solution significantly reduces the
computational complexity as since it involves only elementary functions. This is a practical
solution since modern industrial wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes can adjust the
transmission rate and power consumption to reach achieve the required quality of service (QoS)
[24].

Furthermore, the trade-off between throughput performance and -energy efficiency trade-off is
also considered in this paperstudy. Our results show that incremental cooperative schemes can
outperform other cooperative and non-cooperative schemes .

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The system model is described in section
Section II. Section III presents the outage probability, energy consumption, transmission power,
and throughput performance of single-hop and multi-hop schemes. Cooperative transmission
schemes including selective decode-and-forwardSDF, incremental decode-and-forwardIDF,
amplify-and-forwardAF, and incremental amplify-and-forwardIAF are given presented in section
Section IV. Section V compares the results from a number of perspectives. Finally, section
Section VII concludes the paper with some remarks.

II. SYSTEM MODEL

This paper study considers communication including three relevant nodes—: a source, a relay,
and a destination nodes— over Nakagami-m fading channel. In addition, we assume that the
network operates in the half-duplex mode and transmissions are orthogonal in time in order to
obtain useful signals. In such an environment, the channel is unchanged for a long period of
time. In this case, time-diversity from the source node is unnecessary, since the entire set of
retransmissions may suffer from the same deep fading, which results in increasing increased total
energy consumption. Thus, it is beyond the scope of this paperstudy. As depicted illustrated in
Fig. 1, the source node (S) broadcasts the data packet to the destination node (D). The relay node
(R) can overhear that the transmission due owing to the broadcast nature of wireless
communication, as mentioned in section Section I. ThenSubsequently, the relay node decodes or
simply amplifies, and forwards the data packet to the destination. In this paperstudy, we analyze
six transmission schemes—: Direct direct (Singlesingle-hop), Multimulti-hop, Selective Decode-
and- Forward (SDF), Incremental Decode-and-Forward (IDF), Amplify-and-Forward (AF), and
Incremental Amplify-and- Forward (IAF) strategies.

As depicted in Fig. 1, the source node (S) broadcasts the data packet to the destination node (D).
The relay node (R) can overhear that transmission due to the broadcast nature of wireless
communication, as mentioned in section I. Then, the relay node decodes or simply amplifies, and
forwards the data packet to the destination. In this paper, we analyze six transmission schemes:
Direct (Single-hop), Multi-hop, Selective Decode-and-Forward (SDF), Incremental Decode-and-
Forward (IDF), Amplify-and-Forward (AF) and Incremental Amplify-and- Forward (IAF)
strategies.

SuchThe aforementioned papersstudies mentioned in section Section I solely employ a radio Commented [A6]: I deleted this section because it is a word-
for-word repetition of the last part of the previous paragraph.
propagation environment following Rayleigh distribution, ; however, this distribution model only
considers NLOS communications. In fact, IWSNs often experience some LOS communications.
Hence, Nakagami-m distribution is more suitable than Rayleigh distribution in an industrial
environment. Nakagami radio wave propagation can be well modeled by the probability density
function (pdf):

In (1), the severity of the environment or the amplitude fading is controlled by the parameter m
parameter. We adjust m = 1 for the NLOS fading channel (equivalent to Rayleigh distribution)
and m = 2 for the LOS fading channel (equivalent to Rician distribution). We define S–-D, S–-R,
and R–-D as the source–-destination, source–-relay, and relay–-destination links, respectively.
For the sake of simplicity, the lower case p denotes a given outage probability on specific links
(S–-D, S–-R, and R–-D), while whereas X defines the overall outage probability of the networks
afterward. Furthermore, additive white gaussian Gaussian noise (AWGN) is considered with
variance N0/2 per dimension throughout this paperstudy. Commented [A7]: Should "0" be subscripted here? Please
verify.

III. NON-COLLABORATIVE SCHEMES

In this section, we investigate the conventional non-cooperative schemes including single-hop

(direct) and multi-hop scenarios. In the direct transmission scheme, the source node directly
transmits the packet to the destination node. In case of the multi-hop scheme, the source node
transmits the packet to the relay node. SubsequentlyThen, the relay node is responsible for
forwarding the packet to the destination node. Although the relay node is utilized, the multi-hop
scheme still uses point-to-point transmission topology. In order words, the spatial diversity is
disabled at the receiver. Hence, we categorize both single-hop and multi-hop schemes as non-
collaborative schemes.

A. Single-hop (Direct direct transmission scheme)

The received signal at the destination node is expressed asgiven by:

where hSD is the Nakagami-m fading coefficient for the source–-destination link, PSH is the
transmitted power from the source, SD represents the frequency dependent path loss, sS is the
information signal from the source, while and na is the Additive AWGNWhite Gaussian Noise
vector with variance N0/2 per dimension, where N0 is the thermal noise power spectral density
per Hertz. NowFurther, the distance dependent pathlosspath loss is expressed as given by [25]:

where G is the total gain of the transmitting and receivinge antennae, X denotes the wavelength
of the carrier signal, and while dij represents the distance between node i and node j. The Commented [A8]: Please verify whether i and j are subscripts
here.
parameters Ml and Nf control the link margin compensating for the additive background noise
and the noise figure at the receiver, according to [26]. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of a link
from node i to node j is given byexpressed as:

where N = N0B, B is bandwidth in Hertz. ThenFurther, Pi is the source transmit transmission

power in a specific scheme. Finally, the outage probability of the link i-j link is defined as the
probability that the average signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) falls below a given threshold (X):

where X = 2R- 1, R is the spectral efficiency, (x; y) = Ry 0 ax-1 exp (-a) da and R (x) = Commented [A9]: X was defined as wavelength two
paragraphs. Please look into this.
1R 0 ax-1 exp (-a) da is the complete gamma function at high SNR is given by [27] as X(x; y) =
1/x* yx.

It is worth mentioning here thatNotably, the circuit energy consumption should be taken into
accountconsidered in order to quantify the total energy consumption. Thus, the energy
consumption of direct transmission scheme including includes the source transmission energy,
which is a function of the distance between i- and j nodes, and the hardware energy consumption
of the transmitter and receiver to transmit a k-bit message at rate Rp isexpressed as:

where PSH PAM =X PSH is the power amplifier for source transmission in the single-hop
topology, X is the power efficiency, with X is the drain efficiency of the RF power amplifier [28], Commented [A10]: Many more Xs here. Please revise them if
they are meant to be placeholders for other variables.
and X is the peak-to-average ratio (PAR) for M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM)
modulation scheme. Besides, the total hardware power consumption of the transmitter is given
expressed as:

where Pbase is the baseband energy consumption, while whereas Pmixer,; Pfre syn,; Pfilter TX,
and PDAC are the power consumption of mixer, frequency synthesizer, active filter, and digital-
to-analog converter, respectively. By its turnMoreover, the circuit power consumption at the
receiver, as shown in Fig. 2, is obtained as:

where PLNA and; Pfilter RX are the power consumption of low-noise amplifier and filter at the
receiver, respectively. MeanwhileFurthermore, PIFA and PADC represent the intermediate
frequency amplifier and analog-to- digital converter, respectively. Furthermore, Pbase, PDAC
and, and PADC are derived as:

where Eelec, VD, and I0 characterize the basic energy consumption to run the sensor board,
correcting factor, power supply, and current source, respectively. The remaining parameters C; , Commented [A11]: There are only three terms but four
descriptions here. Please look into this.
fcor; , and LC are the parasitic capacitance, corner frequency, and minimum channel length for a
given CMOS technology, respectively. In order to obtain optimal energy consumption for
successfully forwarding a data packet, we can only minimize PSH PAM since the power
consumption of the processing circuitry, i.e., PTX and PRX, is constant. Substituting the value of Commented [A12]: Terms should be italicized in formal writing
to distinguish them from units.
target outage probability into (6), the minimum required energy is obtained as:

Another performance metric is the throughput efficiency (simple throughput), which is defined
as the average number of information bits that are successfully accepted by the destination per
unit time per unit bandwidth [29]. The throughput expression of the direct method is:

where R is the spectral efficiency.

B. Multi-hop

The main idea in multi-hop relaying is that the communication between S and D is supported by
the a relay node. The communication in multi-hop is carried out in two time- slots (S–-R and R–-
D), which leads to a performance degradation of the system because the end-to-end throughput is
reduced to half. For instance, higher delays can result in discarding the packets and vice versa.
To deal with such impairments, the data rate must be X times greater X times than that of single-
hop scheme, i.e., twice for two-hop topology. We assume that the relay employs a cyclic
redundancy check (CRC) code for error detection and neglects the message overhead. The
received signals at the relay from the source node and at the destination from the relay are
givenexpressed, respectively, byas:

Unlike the single-hop scheme, where the outage occurs only on in the S–-D link, the outage in
the multi-hop scheme can occur on in both S–-R and/or R–-D links. Moreover, the outage
threshold is given expressed as: X = 2 XR - 1. Hence, the outage for each link is:

As explained before, we combine the outage probability of each link to obtain the overall outage
probability as:

It is also worth mentioning here thatNotably, the relay node has the same circuitry complexity as
that of the source node and the destination nodes in an industrial wireless environment. Thus, we
assume that the transmitted power of the source node and relay nodes is equals PTX. Similarly,
the received power of the relay node and destination nodes is assumed to be equal, i.e., to PRX.
Thus, the total energy consumption for of the dual-hop transmission scheme can be determined
as:

where PMH PAM = v*PMH. Notae thatbly, here, the character A represents the energy
consumption in case of failure in decoding the message at the relay node from the source node.
As a resultConsequently, the packet is lost. MeanwhileFurther, B is related to the energy
consumption when the relay node is able to decode the message from the source node, then and
subsequently forwards it to the destination node. AgainFurthermore, we multiply the data rate by
X times to compensate for the reduction in spectral efficiency. By substituting MH SR into (16),
we get obtain the total consumed energy:

NowFurther, by substituting the target outage constraint into (15), we get obtain the optimal
transmission power, which is denoted as PMH:

where a1 and a2 are constants and defined, respectively, as: a1 = (mNS)m(SR) Xm =(m+1) , and
a2 = (mNS)m(RD) Xm=(m+1) . Similar to (12), the throughput for the multi-hop scheme is
expressed as:

It is worth mentioning here that

Notably, the factor 1/2 appears since the communication is carried out in two time- slots (S–-R
and R–-D). Thus, the spectral efficiency is reduced to half [30].

IV. COLLABORATIVE SCHEMES

This section describes a variety of collaborative diversity schemes. In cooperative transmission,

the source transmission could can be overheard by the relay node due owing to the broadcast
nature of wireless communication. ThenSubsequently, in the second time- slot, the relay
retransmits that the packet through a different channel. Such cooperation creates spatial diversity,
which results in increasing the system performance, instead ofas compared to the usinge of Commented [A13]: Please verify whether the change made
here reflects your intended meaning.
multi-antennas per node. This avoids the limitation of size, peak power, and co-interference of
industrial sensor nodes. At the receiver side, the selection combining (SC) or maximal ratio
combining (MRC) technique is used for combining signals from different paths, which can
significantly decrease the outage probability. For the sake of simplicity, we consider selection
combiningSC in this paperstudy, in whichwherein the path with the greatest SNR is chosen for
further processing. In the Selective Decode-and-Forward (SDF), the relay will repeat the source
transmission whenever successfully decoded. MeanwhileHowever, in the Incremental Decode-
and-ForwardIDF protocol, limited feedback is exploited at the destination. Thus, the relay only
cooperates whenever it receives a NACK packet (Negative negative
Acknowledgementacknowledgement), which implies failure in decoding at the destination node.
Such a system makes more efficient use of the channel resources as since the relay node only
cooperates whenever necessary.
A. Selective Decode-and-Forward

The signal received at the relay node and the destination node during the first time- slot can be
expressed as:

where sS is the source transmitted signal. For the second time slot, we model the received signal
at the destination node as:

where sR is the transmitted signal transmitted by the relay node. Without loss of generality, we
can characterize the outage probability for of the SDF protocol as:

Similar to the multi-hop scheme, the outage probability for each link can be computed according
to:

The energy consumption for of the SDF scheme is given as:

where the first term in (24) represents accounts for the consumed energy in case that the relay
fails to decode the message, while whereas the second term in the summation stands
forrepresents the energy consumption when cooperation occurs. Substituting SDF SR of SDF by Commented [A14]: Please verify this correction.

using (23) in (24) we obtain:

In the SDF protocol, the optimal power consumption of the network (for a given value of X) is
computed as:

where a3 = X mN SD X(m+1) *m , and a1 and a2 are predefined in section III-B. Note thatably,
the transmission power of all the cooperative schemes considered in this paper study is same due
owing to the same outage probability.

The throughput performance of the SDF protocol is given byexpressed as [31]:

where we use the prelog factor 1/2 because of the half-duplex constraint.

B. Incremental Decode-and-Forward

In the Incremental Decode-and-ForwardIDF scheme, the feedback channel is exploited at the

destination node. ThenSubsequently, the destination node responds with an acknowledgment
(ACK)/NACK packet whenever the D node detects the successful/failed reception at the first
phase. As a resultConsequently, the D node only requires retransmission from the R node
whenever necessary. We consider limited or quantized feedback in this paper study as an
effective method in order to reduce the feedback traffic. , The reason is becausesince the extra
bandwidth for sending back the feedback packet back to the relay node in a distributed network
is an important problem [32]. For the aforementioned reasonTherefore, X should be greater than
2 for a dual-hop network, ; however, the accurate value depends on the ACK/NACK packet size.
For the sake of simplicity, we assume X = 2 throughout the paper study to compensate for relay
transmission. The SNR and the outage probability of each link are derived based on (5) and (23),
but by replacing with by athe proper transmission scheme, i.e,— PSDF by PIDF . NowFurther,
the total energy consumption including the circuit power is lumped as:

It is pertinent to mention here thatNotably, the first term in (28) accounts forrepresents the
consumed energy in case that the destination node successfully decrypts the message from the
source node in the first phase. ThenSubsequently, the second term contributes to the energy
consumption in case that the relay node and the destination node fail to decode the message. In
order words, the failure happens on both the transmission links, i.e, S–-D and S–R. Finally, the
last expression stands forrepresents the packet decryption on the direct link, while whereas
cooperation occurs on S–-R–-D links. Substituting the corresponding outage probability of each
link into (28), we get obtain the total energy consumption in the IDF scheme:

Note thatably, the transmission power of all the cooperative schemes considered in this paper
study is the same due owing to the same outage probability. ThenSubsequently, we can compute
the throughput of the IDF scheme as:

Here,where A is the throughput contribution of the S–-D link. Next, and B is related to the
throughput contribution of the R–-D link. Moreover, the factor 1=2 is dueowing to the fact that Commented [A15]: Please check this expression "1=2".

the transmission is carried out in two time- slots (S–-R and R–-D).

C. Amplify-and-Forward

In the Amplify-and-ForwardAF scheme, the relay node simply amplifies the received signal
received from the source node and retransmits the scaled version to the destination node. We
formulate the total energy consumption from:

where PAF AMP = X PAF is the source transmission power, and PR = v*[PAF- (PAF- (PAF SR
+ N))] is the relay transmission power in the AF protocol. We subtract (PAF*SR+N) because the
relay node only amplifies the source signal. ThenSubsequently, the relay node forwards it the
source signal forwards to the destination node without decoding. Hence, the relay node does not
have to apply full the entire power.

D. Incremental Amplify-and-Forward

Here, wWe detail the cooperative incremental amplify-and-forward (IAF) transmission approach
from S and R to D. When a feedback channel is available, either the source node decides to
transmit its next packet or the relay node retransmits the amplified version by means of an
acknowledgement (ACK) packet. SoHence, the IAF energy consumption is given expressed as:

where PIAF PAM = X*PIAF . From (32), one knowsit is evident that the relay node only
retransmits when the outage occurs in the direct link. Furthermore, we observe that the
throughput performance for of the IAF scheme is the same as that of the IDF scheme.

V. NUMERICAL RESULTS
In this section, we numerically analyze the performance of the six transmission schemes by using
MATLAB R version R2013a. Firstly, the energy consumption is evaluated by increasing the S–-
D distance. Secondly, the minimum transmission power in whichthat satisfies the maximum
outage probability (QoS constraint) are is derived in order to obtain the lowest energy
consumption. In addition, energy consumption as a function of the spectral efficiency is also
shown. Furthermore, we study the impact of relay location in order to obtain the optimal location
which that can save reduce the energy consumption as much as possible. Thirdly, our simulation
results show the overall outage probability as the transmission power and SNRSD are varied. Commented [A16]: Many terms in this paper seem to have
missing subscripts. I have not highlighted all of them to avoid
Fourthly, the throughput performance of four methods as a function of SNRSD is analyzed repetition. Please look into this.
subsequently. NextSubsequently, it is also necessary to show the trade-off between throughput
performance- and energy consumption trade-off for a fair comparison. In this paperstudy, we
show this trade-off as in terms of the SNRSD and the spectral efficiency. Commented [A17]: The meaning of this sentence may not be
clear to an English reader. Please consider revising it.

For that sakeAccordingly, we suppose that the relay node is positioned at the midpoint in on a
straight line and at the midpoint between the source node and the destination node. The distance
between S- and D. nodes i.e., rSD, is varied from 5 m to 100 m, while whereas the distances
between S- and R nodes, i.e., rSR and R- and D nodes, i.e., rRD are both set equal to 0.5*rSD.
The position of the relay node will be investigated subsequently. Other simulation parameters are
given in Table 1.

The total energy consumption in the NLOS scenario is illustrated in Fig. 3(a). ObviouslyIt is
evident that, the single-hop scheme performs worse than any of the other cooperative schemes,
which is consistent with the results obtained in [19], [23], [33]–[40]. It can be observed that the
multi-hop scheme is less energy efficient than that of the direct transmission. , This is reasonable
because ofowing to the increased spectral efficiency in the multi-hop scheme. If Fig. 3(a) is
zoomed in, we observe that the IAF scheme performs better than the IDF scheme in terms of the
energy efficiency. , The reason issince because the relay node of the IAF scheme does not need
require to spend full the entire power on cooperation. At higher S–-D distances, all transmission
schemes consume higher energy due owing to increased outage probability. In Fig. 3(b), we
show the energy efficiency performance as a function of S–-D distances in the LOS scenario.
The spectral efficiency is set to be 5 bits/s/Hz and the target outage probability is 10-4.
InterestinglyIt can be observed that, the single-hop scheme achieves better performance than the
SDF cooperative scheme. Furthermore, we notice that, when the S–-D distance increases, the
SDF and the IDF schemes outperform the AF and the IAF methods in terms of energy efficiency,
which is was also remarked in [36]. AtIn case of a large S–-D separation, only the IDF can
reduce the energy consumption in this scenario.

NextSubsequently, the optimal power transmission of the NLOS scenario is shown in Fig. 3(c).
We should noticeobserve that the optimal transmission power for four cooperative transmission
schemes is also the same due owing to the same outage probability. In this simulation, the
spectral efficiency is enforced set to be 3 bits/s/Hz, while whereas the outage probability is
constrained to be 10􀀀410-4. Our simulation results show that the cooperative schemes Commented [A18]: Please verify this correction.
significantly reduce the transmission power up to 96.82% and 97.17% at S–-D distance of 5 m
instead ofas compared to using single-hop and multi-hop schemes, respectively. It is
immediatelyis evident seen, as expected, that the four cooperative schemes still present achieve
the best performance in terms of the transmission power in the LOS environment. In this
scenario, the system significantly benefits from the cooperative transmission 80% and 55% at S– Commented [A19]: These percentages may be unclear to an
English reader. Please consider revising them.
-D distance of 5 m, compared to multi-hop and single-hop schemes, respectively.

The impact of the relative relay location in the NLOS channel is demonstrated in Fig. 4(a). We
set the S–-D distance of to 50 m. The distance between S and -R nodes, i.e., rSR is varied from 0
m to 50 m. We normalize the relay location dr = dSR=dSD. The range is from 0 to 1, which
implies indicates that the relay is first overlapped to the source node, and moves towards the
destination node. Furthermore, we observe that all the methods obtain the minimum level when Commented [A20]: Please consider revising this phrase since it
may not be clear to an English reader.
the relay node is in the middle of the S–-D distance, i.e., dr = 0:.5. It is clear evident in from Fig.
Commented [A21]: Please check this ratio.
4(a) that the energy consumption of the single-hop scheme remains constant. , This is simply
becausesince this scheme does not utilize the a relay node. Thus, the energy consumption is not
affected by the relay location. Fig. 4(b) shows the impact of the relative location of the relay
node in the LOS scenario. Similarly, the optimal relay location is at the midpoint. , The reason is
becausesince the relay node can reliably decode the source packet and successfully forward that
the packet to the destination node. Our simulation results are consistent with the results obtained
in [33], [41], [42].

The overall outage probability, which shows the link failures in NLOS and LOS channels, are is
illustrated in Figs. 4(c) and 4(d), respectively. For comparison, the S–-D distance is set to 50 m.
Furthermore, the transmission power of all the methods are equally set PSH = PMH = PSDF =
PAF = PIDF = PIAF, being with spectral efficiency R = 4 bits/s/Hz. Initially, it is shown evident
in Fig. 4(c) that the single-hop scheme achieves even better performance than multi-hop and
cooperative schemes. It is apparent to in all the schemes that the link failures decrease when the
transmission power increases. The Ffour cooperative schemes outperform multi-hop and single-
hop communications in the NLOS scenario at the transmission powers of -17 dB and -7 dB,
respectively. In case of the LOS scenario, as shown in Fig. 4(d), the four cooperative schemes
provide higher better reliability than single-hop and multi-hop schemes when the transmission
power is of -16 dB and -8 dB, respectively.

To In order to illustrateshow the energy consumption as a function of the spectral efficiency in

the NLOS environment, we set rSD = 50 m and the spectral efficiency is varied from 0.5
bits/s/Hz to 20 bits/s/Hz. From Fig. 5(a), we observe that the IAF and IDF schemes achieve the
lowest consumed energy when the spectral efficiency is lower than 9 bits/s/Hz. Notably,e that
these two schemes present achieve a very close similar performances. The multi-hop scheme can
save reduce the energy consumption more than that of the single-hop scheme when the attempted
information rate is less than 2 bits/s/Hz. However, the multi-hop scheme turns to be theappears
to be the worst option scheme in terms of energy consumption when the attempted data rate is Commented [A22]: Please verify this change.

greater than 2 bits/s/Hz. InterestinglyMoreover, the single-hop scheme outperforms other

schemes when the R > 9 bits/s/Hz. , The reason is becausebecause when as R increases, then pSR
also increases. Therefore, the cooperative schemes and multi-hop scheme have a less smaller
advantage over than the direct transmission scheme. Under the LOS condition, as shown in Fig. Commented [A23]: "Over" indicates that cooperative schemes
and multi-hop schemes have an advantage over direct transmission,
5(b), the single-hop is the most energy-efficient scheme only when the attempted data rate is just a smaller one. If this is not the intended meaning, please retain
greater than 5.5 bits/s/Hz. However, the advantages of the AF and the IAF schemes decrease in "than". If the intended meaning is different, please clarify the same.

this scenario. As depicted illustrated in Fig. 5(b), these schemes are energy efficient for R < 6
bits/s/Hz. On the other hand, the multi-hop and cooperative SDF schemes outperform the AF and
the IAF schemes when the attempted information rate is greater than 7.5 bits/s/Hz.

Fig. 5(c) shows the outage probability in a semi-asymmetric network. In this demonstration, we
set SNRSR = SNRRD = 4SNRSD, while SNRSD varies from -10 dB to 60 dB, and R = 2
bits/s/Hz. It can be observed that the four cooperative schemes achieve the best performance in
terms of reliability in over the whole entire SNR range. The rationale for this phenomenon is that
the relay node, located mid-way between the source and destination, provides a reliable link for
successful data transmission. A similar trend is obtained when increasing R is increased = to 6
bits/s/Hz. NextSubsequently, we consider a balanced relay node, in which SNRSR = SNRRD =
SNRSD, as shown in Fig. 5(d). Our simulation results show that the multi-hop scheme presents
achieves better performance than the single-hop scheme in a semi-asymmetric network, while
whereas the single-hop scheme is preferable in a balanced relay network. It is reasonable because
the relay node itself reveals the advantage when their link is in a good condition. However, the
qualitative conclusions are the same, in whichi.e., the cooperative schemes still present appear to
be the best option.

Fig. 6(a) shows that, for SNRSR = SNRRD = 4SNRSD and the spectral efficiency R = 2 bits/s/Hz,
the cooperative IDF and IAF schemes outperform other schemes. The reason is explained as
follows. In low SNR range, the direct link is likely to fail for at packet reception. Thus, the relay
cooperation will make result in more robust the links more robust, leading to higher throughput
performance. In oppositionOn the contrary, in high SNR range, the relay node does not need
require to retransmit the packet because the direct link is sufficiently reliable enough. Therefore,
these incremental cooperative schemes only require one time- slot for communication. The
throughput performance of the single-hop scheme is competitive at high SNR, while whereas
that of the SDF, AF, and multi-hop schemes only achieves half because ofowing to the Commented [A24]: Please consider elaborating on "half".
Please explain the point of comparison: half of <something>.
aforementioned reason. The throughput performance for of a balanced relay network is shown in
Fig. 6(c) for a fixed attempted data rates of 2 bits/s/Hz. A general observation is that the
performance gap between the SDF and the multi-hop schemes becomes remarkable, as compared
to Fig. 6(a). Especially, the throughput performance increases around approximately 127%
instead ofas compared to the using multi-hop transmission for SNRSD of 7 dB. Fig. 6(d) on the
other hand, presents the normalized throughput as a function of SNRSD. When the energy
consumption is taken into accountconsidered, the impact of the feedback bit is obvious evident
from this figure. The IAF and IDF schemes considerably outperform others as they can use
efficiently wireless resources efficiently.
The impact of the variation of the spectral efficiency on the throughput performance is plotted in
Fig. 7(a). In this simulation, a semi-asymmetric network is considered, in which SNRSR =
SNRRD = 4SNRSD. The distance between the source and destination nodes, i.e., rSD, and
SNRSD are set to be 30 m and 15 dB, respectively. According to the figure, the single-hop
transmission scheme achieves quite a good performance in terms of throughput. , The reason is
becausebecause the higher the attempted information rates, the more the outage probability will
be at each hop. Hence, the scheme utilizing a relay node shows exhibits a smaller less advantage
than the single-hop. The IDF and the multi-hop schemes are preferable when the required
attempted data rates are increased to 5.5 bits/s/Hz. For a fair comparison, we normalize the
throughput performance and energy consumption as a function of the information rates when
SNRSD = 15 dB. From the Fig. 7(b), we can clearly seeit is evident that the single-hop scheme
becomes advantageous in case of the spectral efficiency is up toless than 4.9 bits/s/Hz. In case of
a higher spectral efficiency, the IAF, IDF, and multi-hop schemes considerably outperform the
direct transmission. The rationale behind is that, at such high attempted data rate values, the
transmission power for the single-hop considerably increases. Thus, the normalized throughput
of the direct scheme gradually decreases when the spectral efficiency is greater than 5 bits/s/Hz.

Fig. 7(c) depicts illustrates the throughput performance as a function of the attempted
information rates when SNRSD = 0 dB. For such a low SNR regions, our conclusions are
significantly different from Fig. 7(b). The direct transmission scheme shows better performance
than the others, even the IAF and the IDF, for attempted rates up to 4.9 bits/s/Hz. For higher
spectral efficiencyefficiencies, the incremental cooperative IDF and IAF schemes outperform the
direct transmission. AgainMoreover, in case that the energy consumption is taken into
accountconsidered, as shown in Fig. 7(b), the cooperative schemes are outperformed by the
single-hop scheme for spectral efficiency up to 4.9 bits/s/Hz. Besides, the a performance gap
between the IAF and the IDF transmission schemes starts to appear for the attempted rates at the
spectral efficiency of 4 bits/s/Hz, and becomes bigger as the spectral efficiency increases.

VI. CONCLUSION

We studied the performance of six well-known transmission schemes in a linear IWSN scenario.
For this purposeAccordingly, evaluating the performance of these schemes in both NLOS and
LOS environments is was proposed. Our results showed that the incremental cooperative
schemes, i.e., IAF and IDF, can outperform the other cooperative schemes, i.e., AF and DF, and
non-cooperative schemes. Specifically, the incremental cooperative schemes present themselves
asachieve a better trade-off between throughput and energy consumption. In summary, this paper
provides not only guidelines for relay selection algorithms but also when shouldand appropriate
conditions for utilizinge cooperative transmission methods. Commented [A25]: Please verify whether the change made
here reflects your intended meaning.