Adaptive Power Management
One of the key challenges for deploying sensor networks that can operate for years without maintenance is that the nodes are able to operate using energy harvested from the environment – typically using solar panels. This energy-neutral operation is complicated by the fact that the amount of solar energy available can be severely restricted during periods of significant cloud cover or as foliage grows around a sensor node.
Research Topics
Modeling Node Energy Consumption
This research activity aims to model the energy consumption at the sensor nodes, including the radio module, the micro-controller unit, and the sensors. Understanding and quantifying the various modes of operation and duty cycles of all of these components is critical for making informed decisions on adapting their configuration according to application policies.
Predicting Harvested Energy
Our sensor nodes harvest energy from their environment, mainly from solar panels, to maintain their operation over long periods of time without any maintenance or human intervention. It is important to predict the amount of energy that can be harvested on a daily basis to quantify the available energy quota for each node. Such predictions will leverage meteorological data as well as topographical information on the deployment environment.
Energy Neutral Operation
Ensuring energy-neutral operation at each node demands that the energy consumption is less than or equal to the harvested energy for every day. Nodes can only control the amount of energy they consume, but not the amount of energy they harvest, as this depends on environmental conditions. Based on harvesting energy predictions, each node can adapt its configuration so that its energy consumption will not exceed its harvested energy. Nodes leverage their energy model to optimize their radio duty cycle, sensing duty cycle, or power down modes, or sampling period to maintain energy-neutral operation.
Key Staff
Publications
Recent publications addressing energy efficiency and power management for sensor networks:
- Quanjun Chen, Wen Hu, Peter Corke. "Energy-efficient rate adaptive MAC protocol (RA-MAC) for long-lived sensor networks." 6th European Conference on Wireless Sensor Networks (EWSN 2009); Cork, Ireland. 2009: 25-26.
- Tuan Le Dinh, Wen Hu, Sanjay Jha, Peter Corke. "ERTP: Energy-efficient and Reliable Transport Protocol for Data Streaming in Wireless Sensor Networks." Elsevier Journal of Computer Communications, Volume 32, Issues 7-10, 28 May 2009, Pages 1154-1171.
- Tuan Le Dinh, Wen Hu, Sanjay Jha, Peter Corke. "Design and Implementation of a Policy-based Management System for Data Reliability in Wireless Sensor Networks." Proceedings of the Third IEEE International Workshop on Practical Issues in Building Sensor Network Applications (SenseApp), Montreal, Canada, 2008.
