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TYPEWIRELESSTHE SUBJECTSENSOR NETWORKSNAME HERE

UNIT NO 2
SENSOR NETWORKS
ARCHITECTURES

2.3 Energy Consumption of Sensor Nodes

III VI

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NETWORKS
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Energy Consumption of Sensor Nodes

Operation states with different power consumption

Energy is supplied to a sensor node through batteries (have small capacity) and
recharging by energy scavenging( complicated and volatile). Hence, the energy
consumption of a sensor node must be tightly controlled.

The main consumers of energy are the controller, the radio front ends, the memory,
and type of the sensors.
There are two methods to reduce power consumption of these components:
1.Designing low-power chips is efficient for sensor nodes.But the limitation is the
benefit gained by such designs can easily be wasted when the components are
improperly operated.
2.Reduced functionality by using multiple states of operation with reduced energy
consumption.

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Energy Consumption of Sensor Nodes

cont...
● Microcontroller energy consumption: For a controller, typical states are
“active”, “idle”, and “sleep”.

Switching Between Nodes

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Energy Consumption of Sensor Nodes cont...

● Goal: provide as much as smallest

energy
cost/volume/weight/recharge time/longevity
○In WSN, recharging may or may not be an option possible
●Options
○ Primary batteries – not rechargeable at
○ Secondary– rechargeable, only makes sense in some combination with
form of energy harvesting
● Requirements include
○ Low self-discharge
○ Long shelf live
○ Capacity under load
○ Efficient recharging at low current
○ Good relaxation properties (seeming self-recharging)
○ Voltage stability (to avoid DC-DC conversion)

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Energy Consumption of Sensor Nodes cont...

● Intel StrongARM:
- In normal mode the power consumption is up to 400mW.
- In idle mode the power consumption is up to 100 mW.
- In sleep mode the power consumption is up to 50 uW.

● Texas Instruments MSP 430:

- In fully operational mode it consumes 1.2mW
-In the deepest sleep mode(LPM4) only consumes 0.3uW.
- In the next 3 higher modes consumes only 6 uW.

● Atmel ATmega:
-In Atmel ATmega power consumption varies between 6 mW and 15mW in idle and
active modes and is about 75 uW in power-down modes.

Note: Power is energy divided by time. Often units of J/s (joules/second). Gives as
Watts.

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Energy Consumption of Sensor Nodes cont...

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Memory power consumption

∙ Crucial part: FLASH memory
∙ Power for RAM almost negligible

∙ FLASH Writing / Erasing is expensive

∙ Example: FLASH on Mica motes
∙ Reading: ¼ 1.1 nAh per byte
∙ Writing: ¼ 83.3 nAh per byte

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Radio Transceiver:

Radio Transceivers energy consumption:

●A radio transceiver has essentially two tasks as transmitting and receiving data
between a pair of nodes.

●To maintain low energy consumption, the transceivers should be turned off most
of the time and only be activated when necessary.

●The energy consumed by a transmitter is due to RF signal generation(

depends on Modulation & target distance) and due to electronic components
necessary for frequency synthesis, frequency conversion, filters, and so on.

●Similar to the transmitter, the receiver can be either turned off or turned on.

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Radio Transceiver: Cont...

Modeling energy consumption during transmission:

●Amplifier power: Pamp = 𝞪amp + 𝞫amp Ptx

- Ptx radiated power
- 𝞪amp, 𝞫amp constants depending on model
- Highest efficiency (h = Ptx / Pamp ) at maximum output power
●In addition: transmitter electronics needs power P txElec
●Time to transmit n bits: n / (R * Rcode )
- R nomial data rate, Rcode coding rate
●To leave sleep mode
- Time Tstart, average power Pstart

Etx = Tstart Pstart + n / (R * R code ) (PtxElec + 𝝰amp + 𝞫 amp Ptx)

●Simplification: Modulation not considered 9

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Radio Transceiver: Cont...

Modeling energy consumption during reception:

●Receiver also has startup costs

- Time Tstart, average power Pstart

●Time for n bits is the same n / (R * Rcode)

●Receiver electronics needs PrxElec

●Plus: energy to decode n bits EdecBits

+ n / (R * Rcode
Erx = Tstart Pstart ) PrxElec + EdecBits ( R )

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Radio Transceiver: Cont...

Some transceiver numbers:

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Radio Transceiver: Cont...

Dynamic scaling of radio power consumption

●Applying controller-based Dynamic Voltage Scaling (DVS) principles to radio

transceivers as well is tempting, but nontrivial.

●The frequency/voltage versus performance trade-off exploited in DVS is not the

only possible trade-off to exploit.

●For radio communication,in particular, possible parameters include the choice of

modulation and/or code, giving raise to Dynamic Modulation Scaling (DMS), Dynamic
Code Scaling (DCS) and Dynamic Modulation- Code Scaling (DMCS)
optimization techniques.

●The required computational effort should not be underestimated and a combined

analysis should be undertaken on how best to split up energy consumption.

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Relationship between computation and

communication
● Tradeoff?
- Directly comparing computation/communication energy cost not possible

- But: put them into perspective!

- Energy ratio of “sending one bit” vs. “computing one instruction”: Anything between 220
and 2900 in the literature

- To communicate (send & receive) one kilobyte

= computing three million instructions!
● Hence: try to compute instead of communicate whenever possible
● Key technique in WSN – in-network processing!

- Exploit compression schemes, intelligent coding schemes, …

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Power consumption of sensor and

actuators
● Providing any guidelines about the power consumption of the actual sensors and
actuators is next to impossible because of the wide diversity of these devices.
● For some of them – for example, passive light or temperature sensors – the power
consumption can perhaps be ignored in comparison to other devices on a wireless
node.

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