Energy-synchronized computing for sustainable sensor networks

  • Authors:

  • Ting Zhu;Ziguo Zhong;Tian He;Zhi-Li Zhang

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 140 Governors Drive, Amherst, MA 01003, United States and Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minneso ...;Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota, 4-192 EE/CS Building, 200 Union Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States;Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota, 4-192 EE/CS Building, 200 Union Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States;Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota, 4-192 EE/CS Building, 200 Union Street SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455, United States

  • Venue:
  • Ad Hoc Networks
  • Year:
  • 2013

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Abstract

To ensure sustainable operations of wireless sensor systems, environmental energy harvesting has been regarded as one of the most fundamental solutions for long-term applications. In energy-dynamic environments, energy conservation is no longer considered necessarily beneficial, because energy storage units (e.g., batteries or capacitors) are limited in capacity and leakage-prone. In contrast to legacy energy conservation approaches, we aim at energy-synchronized computing for wireless sensor devices. The starting point of this work is TwinStar, which uses ultra-capacitor as the only energy storage unit. To efficiently use the harvested energy, we design and implement leakage-aware feedback control techniques to match the activities of sensor nodes with dynamic energy supply from environments. We conduct system evaluation under both indoor and outdoor typical real-world settings. Results indicate our leakage-aware energy-synchronized control can effectively utilize energy that could otherwise leak away.