Throughput schemes for energy harvesting sensor networks

Abstract

With the growing dependence on the wireless sensor devices, it is imperative that power supply to them and their energy usage has acquired centre stage. Energy harvesting is one possible remedy. To enhance the use of devices that are using harvested energy, many novel schemes need to be devised. In this paper we propose four throughput enhancement schemes with a wide range of applicability to energy harvesting wireless sensor networks. The schemes are designed by taking into consideration available resources in the nodes as well as the energy harvesters that are used to drive the sensor nodes. All the four schemes are implemented, evaluated and compared for their performances. We present schemes from simple naive scheme which is of low complexity, to probabilistic probing scheme which incorporates advanced methods to appropriately use the harvested energy. All the schemes require minimum system resources and sufficient harvested energy before starting communication. Moreover, when the harvested energy varies due to the changes in the environment and characteristics of wireless channel varies, we found that truncated channel inversion with power control is the appropriate scheme. This article provides a thorough step by step discussion on the implementation of maximizing communication throughput in energy harvesting sensor nodes under varying environment. We also provide some insights into energy requirements for a multi-node network.