An Energy Consumption Model for Off-The-Grid Radar Networks

Abstract

Distributed networks of short-range radars offer the potential to observe winds and rainfall at high spatial resolution in volumes of the troposphere that are unobserved by today's long-range weather radars. Future distributed radar networks will involve thousands of small radars, and the design of these systems will be conducted in a trade-space that balances requirements among radar sensing, communications, networking, and distributed computation functions while addressing infras- tructure constraints (such as size, weight, space, and prime power requirements) to achieve cost-effective designs. This paper presents preliminary work on the development of Off-The- Grid (OTG) weather radar networks. These are envisioned as self-contained networks of small remote-sensing / commu- nication / computation nodes, each occupying a volume of 1.5 m 3 and capable of operating independent of the wired power and communication infrastructure. Operating a radar network independently of the electrical grid will require understanding the energy requirements for sensing. This paper will present the current progress in the development of the energy balancing algorithms necessary for OTG operation. Included in this paper will be an energy consumption model for OTG network analysis. The energy model includes the energy cost associated with the three main functions (sensing, computing, communicating) of each radar node in an OTG network. The energy consumption model is a fundamental component of an OTG network emulator that will allow for the testing of the energy balancing algorithms. This paper will present the OTG node energy model that has been developed and that will be used to analyze the developing energy balancing algorithms.