Energy performance of self-powered green IoT nodes

Abstract

The widespread adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT) partly depends on the successful design and deployment of IoT nodes that can operate for several years without any service outage and the need to replace their energy storage systems (ESSs) (e.g., battery, capacitor, or supercapacitor) when all the stored energy is depleted or when the cycle life of the ESSs is reached. Replacing batteries in the case of large-scale IoT networks and nodes located in places that are hard to reach is very challenging and costly, requiring the design of IoT nodes that can operate for several years without the need for human intervention. One such example is the deployment of IoT nodes in large agricultural fields (for soil or crop monitoring) or a long-distance pipeline (for pipeline monitoring). In this paper, we investigated the practical implications of imposing energy-saving thresholds on the energy performance metrics of green IoT nodes. We propose an energy packet-based model for the evaluation of the energy performance of a green IoT node with the possibility of switching the node to energy-saving regimes on the fly when the energy content of the ESS reaches defined thresholds. Configuring single or multiple thresholds improves the energy performance of the node significantly (e.g., increases the lifetime of the node and reduces the probability of service outage and energy wastage), and the value of the threshold(s) should be carefully chosen. The energy performance of the IoT node can also be improved by dimensioning the energy harvesting system to ensure that the node operates for several years without running out of energy (e.g., maximizing the lifetime of the nodes and minimizing the probability of service outage and energy wastage).