On Capacity of Active Relaying in Magnetic Induction based Wireless Underground Sensor Networks

TL;DR

This paper investigates the capacity of active relaying in magnetic induction-based wireless underground sensor networks, aiming to enhance transmission range and performance over existing passive relaying methods.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of active relaying in MI-based WUSNs and analyzes its potential to outperform passive relaying under practical constraints.

Findings

Active relaying can significantly improve transmission range.

Passive relaying offers limited performance gains.

Active relaying combines benefits of traditional relaying and MI transmission.

Abstract

Wireless underground sensor networks (WUSNs) present a variety of new research challenges. Magnetic induction (MI) based transmission has been proposed to overcome the very harsh propagation conditions in underground communications in recent years. In this approach, induction coils are utilized as antennas in the sensor nodes. This solution achieves longer transmission ranges compared to the traditional electromagnetic (EM) waves based approach. Furthermore, a passive relaying technique has been proposed in the literature where additional resonant circuits are deployed between the nodes. However, this solution is shown to provide only a limited performance improvement under practical system design contraints. In this work, the potential of an active relay device is investigated which may improve the performance of the system by combining the benefits of the traditional wireless relaying and the MI based signal transmission.