Adaptive duty cycling for energy harvesting systems

ABSTRACT

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.

REFERENCES

• 1: R Ramanathan, and R Hain, "Toplogy Control of Multihop Wireless Networks Using Transmit Power Adjustment" in Proc. Infocom. Vol 2. 26-30 pp. 404--413. March 2000
• 2: Trevor Pering , Tom Burd , Robert Brodersen, The simulation and evaluation of dynamic voltage scaling algorithms, Proceedings of the 1998 international symposium on Low power electronics and design, p.76-81, August 10-12, 1998, Monterey, California, United States [doi>10.1145/280756.280790]
• 3: Luca Benini , Giovanni de Micheli, Dynamic Power Management: Design Techniques and CAD Tools, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, MA, 1998
• 4: John Kymissis , Clyde Kendall , Joseph Paradiso , Neil Gershenfeld, Parasitic Power Harvesting in Shoes, Proceedings of the 2nd IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers, p.132, October 19-20, 1998
• 5: Nathan S. Shenck , Joseph A. Paradiso, Energy Scavenging with Shoe-Mounted Piezoelectrics, IEEE Micro, v.21 n.3, p.30-42, May 2001 [doi>10.1109/40.928763]
• 6: T. Starner, Human-powered wearable computing, IBM Systems Journal, v.35 n.3-4, p.618-629, 1996
• 7: Mohammed Rahimi, Hardik Shah, Gaurav S. Sukhatme, John Heidemann, and D. Estrin. Studying the feasibility of energy harvesting in a mobile sensor network. In ICRA, 2003.
• 8: Chris Melhuish. The ecobot project. www.ias.uwe.ac.uk/energy autonomy/EcoBot web page.html.
• 9: Jan M. Rabaey , M. Josie Ammer , Julio L. da Silva , Danny Patel , Shad Roundy, PicoRadio Supports Ad Hoc Ultra-Low Power Wireless Networking, Computer, v.33 n.7, p.42-48, July 2000 [doi>10.1109/2.869369]
• 10: Joseph A. Paradiso , Mark Feldmeier, A Compact, Wireless, Self-Powered Pushbutton Controller, Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Ubiquitous Computing, p.299-304, September 30-October 02, 2001, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
• 11: SE Wright, DS Scott, JB Haddow, andMA Rosen. The upper limit to solar energy conversion. volume 1, pages 384 -- 392, July 2000.
• 12: Darpa energy harvesting projects. http://www.darpa.mil/dso/trans/energy/projects.html.
• 13: Werner Weber, Ambient intelligence: industrial research on a visionary concept, Proceedings of the 2003 international symposium on Low power electronics and design, August 25-27, 2003, Seoul, Korea [doi>10.1145/871506.871567]
• 14: Vijay Raghunathan , Aman Kansal , Jason Hsu , Jonathan Friedman , Mani Srivastava, Design considerations for solar energy harvesting wireless embedded systems, Proceedings of the 4th international symposium on Information processing in sensor networks, April 24-27, 2005, Los Angeles, California
• 15: Xiaofan Jiang , Joseph Polastre , David Culler, Perpetual environmentally powered sensor networks, Proceedings of the 4th international symposium on Information processing in sensor networks, April 24-27, 2005, Los Angeles, California
• 16: Chulsung Park, Pai H. Chou, and Masanobu Shinozuka, "DuraNode: Wireless Networked Sensor for Structural Health Monitoring," to appear in Proceedings of the 4th IEEE International Conference on Sensors, Irvine, CA, Oct. 31 - Nov. 1, 2005.
• 17: Aman Kansal , Mani B. Srivastava, An environmental energy harvesting framework for sensor networks, Proceedings of the 2003 international symposium on Low power electronics and design, August 25-27, 2003, Seoul, Korea [doi>10.1145/871506.871624]
• 18: Thiemo Voigt , Hartmut Ritter , Jochen Schiller, Utilizing Solar Power in Wireless Sensor Networks, Proceedings of the 28th Annual IEEE International Conference on Local Computer Networks, p.416, October 20-24, 2003
• 19: A. Kansal, J. Hsu, S. Zahedi, and M. B. Srivastava. Power management in energy harvesting sensor networks. Technical Report TR-UCLA-NESL-200603-02, Networked and Embedded Systems Laboratory, UCLA, March 2006.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.2 COMPUTER-COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
      C.2.4 Distributed Systems

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design

Keywords:
energy harvesting, energy neutral operation, low power design