Abstract
In wireless sensor networks, data transmitted over wireless channels can get corrupted or lost due to channel noises and interferences. Error control coding is a technique that enables reliable delivery of digital data over unreliable communication channels. By adding redundancy to the transmitted data, error control codes allow the decoder to recover the original data based on partial data information received. The codes allow the receiver to recover errors or data loss without retransmission, thus making them suitable for applications where retransmissions are costly or impossible. Due to the stringent energy constraint of battery-powered sensor nodes, it is vital to use the energy-efficient error control scheme. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of Reed-Solomon (RS) codes with the objective to optimize their design factors, leading to optimal bit error performance over both Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channels and Rayleigh fading channels.