Abstract
The issue of energy balancing in Wireless Sensor Networks is a pivotal one, crucial in their deployment. This problem can be subdivided in three areas: (i) energy conservation techniques, usually implying minimizing the cost of communication at the nodes since it is known that the radio is the biggest consumer of the available energy; (ii) energy-harvesting techniques, converting energy from not full-time available environmental sources and usually storing it; and (iii) energy transfer techniques, sharing energy resources from one node (either specialized or not) to another one. In this article, we survey the main contributions in these three areas and identify the main trending topics in recent research. A discussion and some future directions are also included.
Highlights
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is one of the most active research areas with applications in numerous fields such as transport, health, military, agriculture, environment monitoring and control, etc
A wide range of applications as diverse as the one that underlies the concept of sensor networks, with such disparate geographical scenarios ranging from deployments with minimum distances between sensors and base station (BS) (e.g., Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs)) to those that rely on satellite transponders to receive data, with very demanding quality of service requirements in some cases, creates a scenario where multiple alternative solutions/mechanisms will coexist, not necessarily complementary/compatible, perhaps even designed ad hoc for a particular application
This paper compiles the contributions of recent years in various research fields related to sensor networks, and which address from different perspectives the problem of extending the lifetime of the underlying system/application
Summary
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is one of the most active research areas with applications in numerous fields such as transport, health, military, agriculture, environment monitoring and control, etc. A WSN is a set of sensor nodes wirelessly interconnected with at least one central node, called base station (BS) or sink node. A sensor node is an electronic device that essentially has four main components: a sensing unit, a processing unit, a communications unit and a power unit. Other equipment such as a mobility unit or a position tracking unit are optional. The sensing unit allows the node to collect data related to its ambient conditions. These data are handled by the processing unit, and its communication unit is used to exchange data with other nodes and the base station. The power unit provides the necessary energy to the node and it is typically a chemical battery
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