Energy harvesting framework for network simulator 3 (ns-3)

Abstract

In the last few years, the capability of Network Simulator 3 (ns-3) of simulating different aspects of wireless networks has increased rapidly, such that it now provides a wide range of models of real world objects, protocols and devices [1]. Simulation of communication systems and network protocols over realistic device operations is seen as a necessary task before implementation, because it allows for a flexible and fast, but still accurate, testing of the system evolution. Additionally, efficiently managing the energy consumptions of the different elements is a major requirement for an efficient design of wireless networks, since many wireless devices are battery operated.In this regard, the authors in [2] presented an ns-3 energy framework that allows users to simulate the energy consumption at a node as well as to determine the overall network lifetime under specific conditions. This framework adds sufficient support to ns-3 to devise simulations that include the energy consumption of the communication network. In order to do this, this framework defines the concept of an Energy Source, which represents an abstraction of the way in which the node is powered, a Device Energy Model, that defines models for the energy consumption of the different elements that compose the node, and several methods that provide different types of energy information (e.g., residual energy, current load, etc.) to other ns-3 objects external to the framework. The framework is developed with the objective of allowing the interoperability of different energy source and device energy consumption models, and it allows easy integration of new models. Moreover, some implementations of the energy source and device energy models are provided, so that an ns-3 user is able to incorporate them into their existing simulations.The increasing demand for battery operated devices with longer lifetimes has required researchers to explore energy availability from a different perspective, starting from the hardware itself. While the battery technology keeps improving, with the recent advancement in real life wireless devices, devices that are able to harvest energy from the environment, e.g., in the form of solar, thermal, vibrational or radio energy, are now commercially available.Given the above, the problem of designing optimal transmission protocols for energy harvesting wireless networks has recently received considerable attention [3][4][5]. When using an energy harPermission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. WNS3 May 7 2014, Atlanta, Georgia, USA Copyright 20XX ACM X-XXXXX-XX-X/XX/XX ...$15.00. vesting source, the objectives of these protocols are fundamentally different than those o...

Prolonging the Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks: A Review of Current Techniques

“…NS-3 allows for the definition of new energy sources that incorporate the contributions of an energy harvester, with the addition of an energy harvester component with existing energy source as well as the possibility of evaluating the interaction between energy sources and the different energy harvesting models. The work [68] provided an extension of the current energy models in NS-3 introducing the concept of energy harvesting. Two energy harvesting models are as follows: the basic energy harvester, providing time-varying, uniformly distributed amount of energy and the energy harvester that recharges the energy source.…”

Performance evaluation of routing protocols in energy harvesting D2D network

“…The authors in [3] propose an extension to [13] to introduce the concept of an energy harvester but do not evaluate routing protocols in energy-harvesting enabled networks. On the other hand, the authors in [14] consider a fixed battery source and investigate the performance of routing protocols in sensor networks.…”

“…On one hand, it is connected to the actual circuitry while, on the other, it is linked to Energy Source. Interested readers are referred to [3] for more details of the framework.…”

“…The experiments are performed for two datarates, 1 Mbps and 11 Mbps, while the data packet size equals 200 bytes. The WiFi radio energy model consumes energy for transmission and reception according to [3]. It is assumed that real data energy harvester recharges the harvested value according to the power level given in Table 1.…”

“…In this paper, we utilize a real energy harvesting framework in NS-3 simulator [3]. We program Energy Harvester of the framework to use real solar irradiance measurements [4] (see Table 1).…”