Performance of an Autonomous Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor

Abstract

Abstract-While complex autonomic self-organising systems have received much attention, simple autonomous systems are also needed for remote sensing applications, as well as for the the Internet of Things. Such autonomous stand-alone unattended devices may not have access to reliable sources of mains power, and will have to harvest energy locally from ambient sources such as vibrations, heat or light. However energy leakage will also be a problem. This paper proposes a mathematical model to analyse the performance of such systems in the presence of a random source of energy, as well as a random source of data. The equilibrium between random energy, random data and random leakage results in an interesting performance analysis of these small but ubiquitous systems as a whole. A discussion is also provided about the effect of transmission errors.

G-Networks and the Performance of ICT with Renewable Energy

“…Some EPN use diffusion approximation with continuous flows, instead of discrete EPs or jobs moving at random times [2]. A distinct approach to the discrete EPN in [38,44,45,84] was developed for the devices with "zero service time". For instance, a device or sensor may process a data packet in nanoseconds or microseconds, and also consume an EP in milliseconds, which are negligibly small.…”

“…Based on the early work of [44,45], an analytical model was used to analyze the performance of the energy harvesting wireless sensor nodes using a Markov chain representation. A generalized model of a data transmission system with energy harvesting was considered in [82] where a data packet transmission needs more than one EP.…”

Energy Packet Networks: an Annotated Bibliography

“…An approach was investigated to deal with the energy supply and leakage problems associated with the stand-alone autonomous nodes that lack regular intervention due to their deployments in remote areas. Random source of energy and data was taken together to mitigate a state of equilibrium between random energy, random data as well as random leakage to the effect of energy transmission error [24]. Since two flows of data and energy from a single energy packet (SEP) needs to be instantaneously synchronized, similar to the problem of join synchronization [25].…”

Wireless sensor with data and Energy Packets

“…a battery or capacitor), similar to a data buffer or queue of work in a computer system. Recent papers [17], [18], [19] have exploited this paradigm to study energy harvesting wireless sensors with energy losses and leakage. In [20], the case where the energy required for one data packet transmission is exactly K > 1 energy packets was considered, assuming that energy is used only for packet transmission but also for not for packet processing and other sensor node electronics, while [21] has studied the model where a data packet transmission requires exactly two energy packets: one for processing and one for packet transmission, or K e = K t = 1, in the notation of the present paper.…”