We present our Zero Energy Network'' (ZEN) protocol stack for energy harvesting wireless sensor networks applications. The novelty in our work is @math fold: (1) Energy harvesting aware fully featured MAC layer. Carrier sensing, Backoff algorithms, ARQ, RTS CTS mechanisms, Adaptive Duty Cycling are either auto configurable or available as tunable parameters to match the available energy (b) Energy harvesting aware Routing Protocol. The multi-hop network establishes routes to the base station using a modified version of AODVjr routing protocol assisted by energy predictions. (c) Application of a time series called Holt-Winters'' for predicting the incoming energy. (d) A distributed smart application running over the ZEN stack which utilizes a multi parameter optimized perturbation technique to optimally use the available energy. The application is capable of programming the ZEN stack in an energy efficient manner. The energy harvested distributed smart application runs on a realistic solar energy trace with a three year seasonality database. We implement a smart application, capable of modifying itself to suit its own as well as the network's energy level. Our analytical results show a close match with the measurements conducted over EHWSN testbed.
In recent times, a large body of work is being concentrated on Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Nodes (EHWSN). Several energy harvesting sources like solar, thermo, acoustic, wind, RF and wave for driving low power embedded devices are discussed in @cite_16 . Many energy harvesting WSNs have been implemented in past like Trio @cite_32 , AmbiMax @cite_3 , Prometheus @cite_6 . However, literature on Energy Harvesting systems is mostly limited to single node networks or extensive simulation study. Many of the work focus on the system building, efficiency and viability of energy harvesting mechanisms. In @cite_6 authors shows improvement in lifetime where a supercapacitor and battery are charged together from a solar panel by adjusting their duty cycles. Recently Power management and data rate maximization in EHWSN was discussed in @cite_24 . The authors analytically find the required amount of energy to be harvested to ensure energy neutral operation in each slot.
@cite_32 @cite_3 @cite_6 @cite_24 @cite_16
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AmbiMax is an energy harvesting circuit and a supercapacitor based energy storage system for wireless sensor nodes (WSN). Previous WSNs attempt to harvest energy from various sources, and some also use supercapacitors instead of batteries to address the battery aging problem. However, they either waste much available energy due to impedance mismatch, or they require active digital control that incurs overhead, or they work with only one specific type of source. AmbiMax addresses these problems by first performing maximum power point tracking (MPPT) autonomously, and then charges supercapacitors at maximum efficiency. Furthermore, AmbiMax is modular and enables composition of multiple energy harvesting sources including solar, wind, thermal, and vibration, each with a different optimal size. Experimental results on a real WSN platform, Eco, show that AmbiMax successfully manages multiple power sources simultaneously and autonomously at several times the efficiency of the current state-of-the-art for WSNs In this paper, we present a software control method that maximizes the sensing rate of wireless sensor networks (WSN) that are solely powered by ambient RF power. Different from all other energy harvesting WSN systems, RF powered systems present a new challenge for the energy management. A WSN node repeatedly charges and discharges at short intervals depending on the energy intake. A capacitor is used for an energy storage in the energy harvesting system because of its efficient charge and discharge performance and infinite recharge cycles. When this charging time is too short, the node is more likely to experience an energy shortage. On the contrary, if it is too long, more energy is lost because of the leakage in the capacitor. Therefore, we implemented an adaptive duty cycle control scheme that is optimized for RF energy harvesting. This method maximizes the sensing rate considering the leakage problem, a factor that has never previously been studied in this context. Our control scheme improves efficiency by aggregate evaluation of the operation reliability and leakage reduction. Harvesting energy from the environment is feasible in many applications to ameliorate the energy limitations in sensor networks. In this paper, we present an adaptive duty cycling algorithm that allows energy harvesting sensor nodes to autonomously adjust their duty cycle according to the energy availability in the environment. The algorithm has three objectives, namely (a) achieving energy neutral operation, i.e., energy consumption should not be more than the energy provided by the environment, (b) maximizing the system performance based on an application utility model subject to the above energy-neutrality constraint, and (c) adapting to the dynamics of the energy source at run-time. We present a model that enables harvesting sensor nodes to predict future energy opportunities based on historical data. We also derive an upper bound on the maximum achievable performance assuming perfect knowledge about the future behavior of the energy source. Our methods are evaluated using data gathered from a prototype solar energy harvesting platform and we show that our algorithm can utilize up to 58 more environmental energy compared to the case when harvesting-aware power management is not used. In this paper, a reinforcement learning-based throughput on demand (ToD) provisioning dynamic power management method (RLTDPM) is proposed for sustaining perpetual operation and satisfying the ToD requirements for today's energy harvesting wireless sensor node (EHWSN). The RLTDPM monitors the environmental state of the EHWS and adjusts their operational duty cycle under criteria of energy neutrality to meet the demanded throughput. Outcomes of these observation-adjustment interactions are then evaluated by feedback reward that represents how well the ToD requests are met; subsequently, the observation-adjustment-evaluation process, so-called reinforcement learning, continues. After the learning process, the RLTDPM is able to autonomously adjust the duty cycle for satisfying the ToD requirement, and in doing so, sustain the perpetual operation of the EHWSN. Simulations of the proposed RLTDPM on a wireless sensor node powered by a battery and solar cell for image sensing tasks were performed. Experimental results demonstrate that the achieved demanded throughput is improved 10.7 for the most stringent ToD requirement, while the residual battery energy of the RLTDPM is improved 7.4 compared with an existing DPM algorithm for EHWSN with image sensing purpose. Energy consumption is a perennial issue in the design of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) which typically rely on portable sources like batteries for power. Recent advances in ambient energy harvesting technology have made it a potential and promising alternative source of energy for powering WSNs. By using energy harvesters with supercapacitors, WSNs are able to operate perpetually until hardware failure and in places where batteries are hard or impossible to replace. In this paper, we study the performance of different medium access control (MAC) schemes based on CSMA and polling techniques for WSNs which are solely powered by ambient energy harvesting using energy harvesters. We base the study on (i) network throughput (S), which is the rate of sensor data received by the sink, (ii) fairness index (F), which determines whether the bandwidth is allocated to each sensor node equally and (iii) inter-arrival time (@c) which measures the average time difference between two packets from a source node. For CSMA, we compare both the slotted and unslotted variants. For polling, we first consider identity polling. Then we design a probabilistic polling protocol that takes into account the unpredictability of the energy harvesting process to achieve good performance. Finally, we present an optimal polling MAC protocol to determine the theoretical maximum performance. We validate the analytical models using extensive simulations incorporating experimental results from the characterization of different types of energy harvesters. The performance results show that probabilistic polling achieves high throughput and fairness as well as low inter-arrival times. This paper considers a scenario that a wireless sensor node is powered by harvesting energy from ambient solar energy and required the sustainable operation. Fuzzy inference system with reinforcement learning is used in this study for the dynamic energy management of the node in the energy harvesting environment. By interacting with the given environment, the proposed method adjusts the duty cycle of the sensing task in the node according to the proposed method. The outcomes of these interactions are evaluated by fuzzy inference system in terms of reward that express how well the duty-cycle adjustments in satisfying the given requirement of energy neutrality. Experimental results show that the proposed method obtained better convergence and less root mean square deviation off energy neutral level in comparing with other methods. Energy harvesting wireless sensor network (EHWSNs) are being actively studied in order to solve the problems faced by battery-operated WSNs, namely the cost for battery replacement and impacts on the environment. In EH-WSNs, each node harvests ambient energy, such as light, heat, vibration, and uses it for sensing, computations, and wireless communications, where the amount of harvested energy of each node varies depending on their surrounding environments. MAC protocols for EH-WSNs need to be designed to achieve high throughput and fairness, however, the conventional MAC protocols proposed for EH-WSNs do not adapt to the harvesting rate of each node, resulting in poor fairness. In this paper, we propose a fair MAC protocol based on polling scheme for EH-WSNs. The proposed scheme adjusts contention probability of each node according to the individual harvesting rate, thereby increasing throughput achieved by nodes with low harvesting rate. We evaluate throughput and fairness of the proposed fair polling scheme by computer simulations, and show that the proposed scheme can improve fairness with little degradation of the overall network throughput. Environmental energy is becoming a feasible alternative for many low-power systems, such as wireless sensor nodes. Designing an environmentally powered device faces several challenges: choosing the exact type of the energy harvester, the energy storage elements and determining the duty cycle of the application. With harvesting, the design process becomes even more difficult because it also has to take into account the unpredictability of the energy source. The contribution of this paper is a methodology that facilitates the analysis of energy harvesting nodes. The existing modeling strategies for battery powered systems are not suitable because they do not capture the uncertainty of the power source. Also, the metrics of interest for battery powered devices are different, as opposed to the harvesting powered ones: in the former case we search to maximize the system lifetime, while in the latter case a more expressive goal is to increase the system availability. This paper considers a scenario that wireless sensor node is powered by harvesting energy with the characteristics of ambiguity and uncertainty. Reinforcement learning with fuzzy reward (RLFR) is used in this study for the dynamic power management of such energy harvesting wireless sensor nodes. By interacting with the given environment, the RLFR adjusts the duty-cycle in data sensing task according to the variable incoming energy related signals. The outcomes of these interactions are evaluated by fuzzy reward that express how well the duty-cycle adjustments in satisfying given requirement of energy neutrality. Simulation results show that the RLFR not only satisfies the sensing requirement in maintaining energy neutrality, but it also achieves better energy utilization in terms of residual battery energy in comparing with another existing dynamic power management method. Power management is an important concern in sensor networks, because a tethered energy infrastructure is usually not available and an obvious concern is to use the available battery energy efficiently. However, in some of the sensor networking applications, an additional facility is available to ameliorate the energy problem: harvesting energy from the environment. Certain considerations in using an energy harvesting source are fundamentally different from that in using a battery, because, rather than a limit on the maximum energy, it has a limit on the maximum rate at which the energy can be used. Further, the harvested energy availability typically varies with time in a nondeterministic manner. While a deterministic metric, such as residual battery, suffices to characterize the energy availability in the case of batteries, a more sophisticated characterization may be required for a harvesting source. Another issue that becomes important in networked systems with multiple harvesting nodes is that different nodes may have different harvesting opportunity. In a distributed application, the same end-user performance may be achieved using different workload allocations, and resultant energy consumptions at multiple nodes. In this case, it is important to align the workload allocation with the energy availability at the harvesting nodes. We consider the above issues in power management for energy-harvesting sensor networks. We develop abstractions to characterize the complex time varying nature of such sources with analytically tractable models and use them to address key design issues. We also develop distributed methods to efficiently use harvested energy and test these both in simulation and experimentally on an energy-harvesting sensor network, prototyped for this work. In this paper, we present an adaptive power manager for solar energy harvesting sensor nodes. We use a simplified model consisting of a solar panel, an ideal battery and a general sensor node with variable duty cycle. Our power manager uses Reinforcement Learning (RL), specifically SARSA(λ) learning, to train itself from historical data. Once trained, we show that our power manager is capable of adapting to changes in weather, climate, device parameters and battery degradation while ensuring near-optimal performance without depleting or overcharging its battery. Our approach uses a simple but novel general reward function and leverages the use of weather forecast data to enhance performance. We show that our method achieves near perfect energy neutral operation (ENO) with less than 6 root mean square deviation from ENO as compared to more than 23 deviation that occur when using other approaches. Traditional wireless sensor networks (WSNs) face the problem of a limited-energy source, typically batteries, resulting in the need for careful and effective utilization of the energy source. However, inevitable energy depletion will eventually disturb the operation of a WSN. Energy harvesting (EH) technology is acquiring particular interest, because it has the potential to provide a continuous energy supply in battery-powered WSNs. Solar energy is the most effective environmental energy for EH-WSNs because of its high energy intensity, which comes from a non-controllable source. Therefore, the prediction of future energy availability is a critical issue, as the amount of the harvestable energy may vary over time. In this paper, a novel solar energy prediction algorithm with Q-learning, called Q-learning-based solar energy prediction (QL-SEP), is proposed. Q-learning is an effective way of predicting future actions based on past observations. The distinctive feature of QL-SEP is that not only past days’ observations but also the current weather conditions are considered for prediction. The performance of QL-SEP is simulated in this paper using real-world measurements obtained from a solar panel in comparison with the state-of-art approaches. With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), an increasing number of energy harvesting methods are being used to supplement or supplant battery based sensors. Energy harvesting sensors need to be configured according to the application, hardware, and environmental conditions to maximize their usefulness. As of today, the configuration of sensors is either manual or heuristics based, requiring valuable domain expertise. Reinforcement learning (RL) is a promising approach to automate configuration and efficiently scale IoT deployments, but it is not yet adopted in practice. We propose solutions to bridge this gap: reduce the training phase of RL so that nodes are operational within a short time after deployment and reduce the computational requirements to scale to large deployments. We focus on configuration of the sampling rate of indoor solar panel based energy harvesting sensors. We created a simulator based on 3 months of data collected from 5 sensor nodes subject to different lighting conditions. Our simulation results show that RL can effectively learn energy availability patterns and configure the sampling rate of the sensor nodes to maximize the sensing data while ensuring that energy storage is not depleted. The nodes can be operational within the first day by using our methods. We show that it is possible to reduce the number of RL policies by using a single policy for nodes that share similar lighting conditions. An emerging solution for prolonging the lifetime of energy constrained relay nodes in wireless networks is to avail the ambient radio-frequency (RF) signal and to simultaneously harvest energy and process information. In this paper, an amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying network is considered, where an energy constrained relay node harvests energy from the received RF signal and uses that harvested energy to forward the source information to the destination. Based on the time switching and power splitting receiver architectures, two relaying protocols, namely, i) time switching-based relaying (TSR) protocol and ii) power splitting-based relaying (PSR) protocol are proposed to enable energy harvesting and information processing at the relay. In order to determine the throughput, analytical expressions for the outage probability and the ergodic capacity are derived for delay-limited and delay-tolerant transmission modes, respectively. The numerical analysis provides practical insights into the effect of various system parameters, such as energy harvesting time, power splitting ratio, source transmission rate, source to relay distance, noise power, and energy harvesting efficiency, on the performance of wireless energy harvesting and information processing using AF relay nodes. In particular, the TSR protocol outperforms the PSR protocol in terms of throughput at relatively low signal-to-noise-ratios and high transmission rates. A reinforcement learning (RL) method for Quality of Service (QoS)-aware power management (PM) of an energy harvesting wireless sensor network, named QoS-aware RLPM, is proposed in this paper. The RL environment for each sensor node is represented by the observable measurements of harvesting energy and residual energy stored in the battery. To achieve QoS-awareness, the proposed QoS-aware RLPM attempts to satisfy various QoS demands by adjusting the duty-cycle rate of sensor node according to the observable measurements. The outcomes of these interactions are evaluated by rewards that express how well the duty-cycle rate adjustments satisfy QoS requests under energy neutrality criteria [1]. The QoS-aware RLPM learns the adjustment strategy of the duty-cycle rate by interacting with the environment and at the same time the QoS of the sensor network is maintained. Experiment results show that the proposed method satisfies the QoS requests under the energy neutrality criteria and performs better than the adaptive duty-cycling method of [1]. Sensor networks with battery-powered nodes can seldom simultaneously meet the design goals of lifetime, cost, sensing reliability and sensing and transmission coverage. Energy-harvesting, converting ambient energy to electrical energy, has emerged as an alternative to power sensor nodes. By exploiting recharge opportunities and tuning performance parameters based on current and expected energy levels, energy harvesting sensor nodes have the potential to address the conflicting design goals of lifetime and performance. This paper surveys various aspects of energy harvesting sensor systems- architecture, energy sources and storage technologies and examples of harvesting-based nodes and applications. The study also discusses the implications of recharge opportunities on sensor node operation and design of sensor network solutions. To sustain perpetual operation, systems that harvest environmental energy must carefully regulate their usage to satisfy their demand. Regulating energy usage is challenging if a system's demands are not elastic and its hardware components are not energy-proportional, since it cannot precisely scale its usage to match its supply. Instead, the system must choose when to satisfy its energy demands based on its current energy reserves and predictions of its future energy supply. In this paper, we explore the use of weather forecasts to improve a system's ability to satisfy demand by improving its predictions. We analyze weather forecast, observational, and energy harvesting data to formulate a model that translates a weather forecast to a wind or solar energy harvesting prediction, and quantify its accuracy. We evaluate our model for both energy sources in the context of two different energy harvesting sensor systems with inelastic demands: a sensor testbed that leases sensors to external users and a lexicographically fair sensor network that maintains steady node sensing rates. We show that using weather forecasts in both wind- and solar-powered sensor systems increases each system's ability to satisfy its demands compared with existing prediction strategies. A promising solution for achieving autonomous wireless sensor networks is to enable each node to harvest energy in its environment. To address the time-varying behavior of energy sources, each node embeds an energy manager responsible for dynamically adapting the power consumption of the node in order to maximize the quality of service while avoiding power failures. A novel energy management algorithm based on reinforcement learning (RLMan) is proposed in this paper. By continuously exploring the environment, RLMan adapts its energy management policy to time-varying environment, regarding both the harvested energy and the energy consumption of the node. Linear function approximations are used to achieve very low computational and memory footprint, making RLMan suitable for resource-constrained systems, such as wireless sensor nodes. Moreover, RLMan only requires the state of charge of the energy storage device to operate, which makes it practical to implement. Exhaustive simulations using real measurements of indoor light and outdoor wind show that RLMan outperforms current state-of-the-art approaches, by enabling almost 70 gain regarding the average packet rate. Moreover, RLMan is more robust to variability of the node energy consumption. Energy harvesting offers a promising alternative to solve the sustainability limitations arising from battery size constraints in sensor networks. Several considerations in using an environmental energy source are fundamentally different from using batteries. Rather than a limit on the total energy, harvesting transducers impose a limit on the instantaneous power available. Further, environmental energy availability is often highly variable and a deterministic metric such as residual battery capacity is not available to characterize the energy source. The different nodes in a sensor network may also have different energy harvesting opportunities. Since the same end-user performance may be achieved using different workload allocations at multiple nodes, it is important to adapt the workload allocation to the spatio-temporal energy availability profile in order to enable energy-neutral operation of the network. This paper describes power management techniques for such energy harvesting sensor networks. Platform design considerations as well as power scaling techniques at the node-level and network-level are described. Wireless networks suffer from battery discharging specially in cooperative communications when multiple relays have an important role but they are energy-constrained. To overcome this problem, energy harvesting from Radio Frequency signals is applied to charge the node battery. These intermediate nodes have the ability to harvest energy from the source signal and use the harvested energy to transmit information to the destination. Simultaneous energy harvesting and data transmission can be done in multi-relay systems. Each relay dedicates a part of time or power for energy harvesting, and the remainder part is devoted for data transmission. Based on time or power division, 2 relaying protocols known as time switching based relaying protocol or power splitting based relaying protocol exist. These 2 protocols can also be applied in delay-limited and delay-tolerant transmission systems. The previous works have assumed a single relay or single antenna for energy harvesting, but in this paper, the proposed method is concentrated on improving the throughput by using multiple antennas in multi-relay system. Two strategies of selecting the signal of multiple antennas for transmission known as maximum ratio transmit and Antenna selection has been used in this paper. Maximum ratio transmit combines the signals of antennas but Antenna selection selects the antenna with maximum signal-to-noise ratio. According to our simulation results, when using multi-antenna relays, ability of energy harvesting is increased compared with single-relay or single-antenna system and thus the system performance will be improved considerably. Also, maximum ratio transmit method has better performance compared with Antenna Selection one.