Energy consumption analysis of ZigBee-based energy harvesting wireless sensor networks

Energy consumption is one of the most important practical properties for deploying an energy harvesting wireless sensor network. This paper presents the energy consumption analysis of ZigBee-based energy harvesting wireless sensor networks to understand the energy requirements to the energy harvesting technologies from a practical aspect. Three kinds of energy consumption are analyzed to investigate the main factors influencing the design of energy harvesting technology: the energy consumption of end devices and of routers in power up mode, the energy consumption of data transmission with/without application acknowledgement requirements, and the energy consumption of routers supporting different node density. Based on the measurements, the key metrics influencing the lifetime of wireless sensor networks are summarized and an energy consumption model is proposed to evaluate the lifetime of a sensor node. Moreover, the potential energy-saving solutions are discussed for ZigBee-based energy harvesting wireless sensor networks.