Adaptive scheduling to enhance data security and energy efficiency on energy harvesting platform

Abstract

Radio-frequency (RF)-based energy harvesting platforms are appealing for always-on applications due to its radio frequency energy harvesting capability. However, the current RF-based energy harvesting capability is limited by many factors including harvesting distance, device constraints, communication, and security. RF-based energy harvesting platforms tend to harvest less energy as the device is further away, and impacts the ability to execute its own applications properly. The limited storage of energy on such platforms will make it even challenging to implement energy-hungry security functions on top of basic functions such as sensing, computing and transmitting. Therefore, by default, a lot of RF-based energy harvesting platforms have no basic security functions implemented, which is not acceptable for security-sensitive applications such as biomedical applications.In this paper, we propose an adaptive light-weight scheduling mechanism that aims to balance data security and energy efficiency for application on RF-based energy-harvesting platforms. We will then prototype this scheduler on a Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform (WISP) device. The results in this paper will test this scheduling mechanism in action on a WISP device, along with use of a sensor to determine energy impact on the device, a deadline-based mechanism for data distribution, and finally comparing these cases with average voltage and total time.