Cooperative Time-Reversal Communication is Order-Optimal for Data Aggregation in Wireless Sensor Networks

Data gathering is one of the most important services provided by wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The predominant traffic pattern in data gathering services is many-to-one communication. Hence, it is critical to understand the limitations of many-to-one information flows and devise efficient data aggregation protocols to support prolonged operations in WSNs. In this paper, we demonstrate that a data aggregation rate of p(logn/n) is optimal and that this rate can be achieved using a generalization of cooperative beam forming called cooperative time-reversal communication. In contrast, the non-cooperative multihop relay strategies widely adopted in the literature are shown to be suboptimal in both capacity and network lifetime