ESC: Energy Synchronized Communication in Sustainable Sensor Networks

—With advances in energy harvesting techniques, it is now feasible to build sustainable sensor networks (SSN) to support long-term applications. Unlike battery-powered sensor networks, the objective of sustainable sensor networks is to effectively utilize a continuous stream of ambient energy. Instead of pushing the limits of energy conservation, we are aiming at energy-synchronized designs1 to keep energy supplies and demands in balance. Specifically, this work presents the Energy Synchronized Communication (ESC) as a transparent middleware between the network layer and data link layer that controls the amount and timing of RF activity at receiving nodes. In this work, we first derive a delay model for cross-traffic at individual nodes, which reveals an interesting stair effect in low-duty-cycle networks. This effect allows us to design a localized energy synchronization control with O(1) time complexity that shuffles or adjusts the working schedule of a node to optimize crosstr...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: ICNP
• Authors: Yu Gu, Ting Zhu, Tian He
• Keywords: Energy Harvesting Techniques, Energy Synchronized Communication, ICNP 2009, Network Protocols, Sustainable Sensor Networks