Power Simulation and Power Profiling of Wireless Sensor Networks
Jan Haase
Jan Haase, Institute of Computer Technology, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria.
Manuscript received on 21 September 2013 | Revised Manuscript received on 28 September 2013 | Manuscript published on 30 September 2013 | PP: 110-116 | Volume-2 Issue-4, September 2013 | Retrieval Number: D0809092413/2013©BEIESP
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© The Authors. Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC-BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: —Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are battery-powered, thus they should be optimized for low energy consumption already at design time. Current tools offer different levels of power simulation, showing the designer where the energy was spent, where hot spots might be optimizable, and so on. However, a semantic gap still remains open: The question why a specific part of the software was executed and therefore energy was consumed. Especially for WSN this question not only encompasses single devices, but whole networks, which can suffer e.g. from network congestion, attenuation, routing errors, lost packets, etc. This paper presents an overview over existing power simulation tools as well as the new approach of power profiling, which collects much data about many aspects that lead to energy consumption in a network of wireless sensor nodes. The outcome is a statistic about the energy consumption for each single generated transaction, from the moment it was generated until the resulting message is finally received. Using this, the designer is able to optimize the whole system, e.g. by running several simulations with different communication protocols, network topologies, duty cycles, or wake-up timings.
Keywords: Wireless Sensor Networks, WSN, Power Estimation, Power Profiling, Energy Efficiency.
Scope of the Article: WSN