Energy-adaptive data compression and transmission range determination for energy-harvesting wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Energy-harvesting sensor nodes have been developed to solve the limited lifetime problem in wireless sensor networks. However, these energy-harvesting nodes have similar problems such as blackout time caused by excessive energy consumption and wasting of harvested energy that exceeds the charging capacity of their batteries. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a scheme that uses the surplus energy exceeding the charging capacity of each node's battery to compress data and/or expand transmission range, thereby reducing the workload of relay nodes and increasing the amount of data that reaches the sink node. In this scheme, a node selects the more efficient method between data compression and expansion of transmission range by estimating the amount of energy it harvested and the workload of the relay nodes to the sink. If surplus energy exists even after the aforementioned process, the node combines both methods. The experimental results indicates that the proposed scheme reduces the workload of relay nodes, thereby reducing the blackout time for all nodes and increasing data throughput.