Energy-Model-Based Optimal Communication Systems Design for Wireless Sensor Networks

Ye Li,Da Xu,Yuwei Zhang,Dengyu Qiao,Zhao Xu,Fen Miao

doi:10.1155/2012/861704

Abstract

As is widely used in our daily life, wireless sensor network (WSN) is considered as one of the most important technologies of the new century. Although, the sensor nodes are usually battery powered with limited energy sources, the system energy consumption must be minimized in order to extend the life time. Since the energy consumption of transceiver front ends is dominant in the whole sensor nodes, we focus on how to minimize energy consumption by the system level design. According to the applications, we analyze four types of RF architectures: on-off keying (OOK) transceiver, phase-shift keying (PSK) transceiver, quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) transceiver, and frequency-shift keying (FSK) transceiver which are widely used in WSN and establish the related energy models for each kind of architecture, respectively. We connect the baseband parameters such as modulation level, data rate, bandwidth, and propagation distance. with the energy consumption of RF front end for WSN. Afterwards, through theoretical and numerical analysis in system level, we discuss and conclude how to design optimal energy-quality system in terms of various application scenarios.

Highlights

With the rapid development of wireless communication and low-power-embedded techniques, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are widely used in many industrial and civilian application areas, including industrial process monitoring and control, machine status monitoring, environment and habitat monitoring, healthcare applications, home automation, and traffic control
We develop the energy models for four types of RF front-ends architectures with on-off keying (OOK), phase-shift keying (PSK), quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), and frequency-shift keying (FSK) modulation, respectively, which are popular in WSN nodes
The linear power amplifier (PA) is adopted in linear modulation systems, such as OOK, PSK, and QAM, whereas the nonlinear PA would be employed in the nonlinear modulation systems, for example FSK modulation

Summary

Introduction

With the rapid development of wireless communication and low-power-embedded techniques, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are widely used in many industrial and civilian application areas, including industrial process monitoring and control, machine status monitoring, environment and habitat monitoring, healthcare applications, home automation, and traffic control. The results can just be applied to the Wi-Fi system instead of WSN application Since there are both linear and nonlinear RF front-ends architectures and modulation schemes widely used in WSN, to design an energy efficient system, we should not consider just one architecture or only linear modulation. The optimal architecture or modulation scheme may be different It is shown in [17] that the energy efficiency for 4QAM is higher than 16QAM with respect to long distance transmission. We develop the energy models for four types of RF front-ends architectures with OOK, PSK, QAM, and FSK modulation, respectively, which are popular in WSN nodes.

Typical RF Architectures for WSN Nodes

System Level Power Models

Findings

Energy Evaluations for Different Applications

Conclusion