Ad Hoc Networks 64 (2017) 99–111 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ad Hoc Networks journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/adhoc On the performance of adaptive coding schemes for energy efficient and reliable clustered wireless sensor networks Imad Ez-zazi a,∗ , Mounir Arioua a , Ahmed El Oualkadi a , Pascal Lorenz b a Laboratory of Information and Communication Technologies (LabTIC), Abdelmalek Essaadi University, ENSA of Tangier, Morocco b GRTC Laboratory, Network and Telecommunication Department, IUT-University of Haute Alsace, Colmar, France a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 31 January 2017 Revised 18 June 2017 Accepted 7 July 2017 Available online 8 July 2017 Keywords: Wireless sensor networks Clustering Channel coding Energy efficiency Reliability a b s t r a c t Clustering is the key for energy constrained wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Energy optimization and communication reliability are the most important consideration in designing efficient clustered WSN. In lossy environment, channel coding is mandatory to ensure reliable and efficient communication. This reliability is compromised by additional energy of coding and decoding in cluster heads. In this paper, we investigated the trade-off between reliability and energy efficiency and proposed adaptive FEC/FWD and FEC/ARQ coding frameworks for clustered WSNs. The proposed schemes consider channel condition and inter-node distance to decide the adequate channel coding usage. Simulation results show that both the proposed frameworks are energy efficient compared to ARQ schemes and FEC schemes, and suitable to prolong the clustered network lifespan as well as improve the reliability. © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Wireless sensor network (WSN) is one of the most promis- ing technologies due to their unique characteristics, low cost, easy deployment and flexibility [1]. This emergent technology has at- tracted significant attention in recent years in many applications [2,3]. WSN is composed of numerous sensor nodes dispersed au- tonomously in specific area of interest to gather a physical pa- rameter or monitor environmental conditions [4]. Nodes typically powered by small and limited batteries which replacement is very difficult and expensive in hostile environment. Thus, nodes are ex- pected to be stand-alone and able to run for many months or even years without batteries replacement [5]. Therefore, reducing en- ergy consumption in order to prolong network lifespan is the most crucial requirement and challenge consideration for WSN [6,7]. Communication reliability is another crucial factor in low power WSN [8,9]. In highly lossy environment, the radio signal is often affected by noise, interferences, multipath fading and shadowing. These encountered undesirable impairments result in significant packet loss and delayed receiving. The increase of transmission en- ergy results in successful and reliable transmission. However, the rise of transmission energy profoundly affects the sensor nodes energy and the network lifetime. Designing optimal WSN entails ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: ezzazi@ieee.org, imad.ezzazi@gmail.com (I. Ez-zazi), m.arioua@ieee.org (M. Arioua), ahmed.eloualkadi@ieee.org (A. El Oualkadi), lorenz@ieee.org (P. Lorenz). providing reliable communication with the minimum required en- ergy consumption. Using error control coding (ECC) is an efficient strategy commonly used to lower the required transmission en- ergy along with protecting the transmitted packets from errors and packet loss [10,11]. In low power application such as WSN, applying adaptive and low power ECC techniques is a primordial require- ment [12]. Moreover, a WSN requires a powerful channel coding scheme when the transmission distance outweighs certain thresh- old level. Although advanced coding schemes provide higher cod- ing gain, they require higher energy consumption with their com- plex decoding algorithms. If the extra energy consumption at the decoder exceeds the transmitted power savings due to the use of coding, then coding would not be energy-efficient compared to an uncoded system. Thus, a trade-off between reliability and energy depletion should be considered in order to optimize the error con- trol schemes in WSN [13]. Network architecture and routing design are relevant factors which affect reliability and energy efficiency in WSN [14]. Clus- tered networks based on clustering routing are widely adopted in WSN to manage the energy efficiency [15–17]. In cluster-based ar- chitecture, two types of nodes coexist in the network and form clusters. Source nodes (S) which sense, encode and transmit their data, and cluster heads (CH) which receive and decode data in one hand, and then aggregate, encode and transmit the data to the base station (BS) in the other hand. Indeed, when a node is se- lected as a CH, the computation and energy burden become com- pletely important. In this case, using powerful coders and complex decoders intensely affects and worsens the CH energy and the net- http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.adhoc.2017.07.001 1570-8705/© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.