Design and Implementation an Energy-Aware Routing Mechanism for Solar Wireless Sensor Networks

Due to the thriving development of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and solar power generation technology, coupled with the continuous progress of the semiconductor industry, solar cell photoelectrical conversion efficiency has increased accordingly, causing the cost of solar power generation systems to gradually decrease. Rising environmental protection awareness results in the increasingly popular use of solar power. WSNs are generally deployed in remote environments to detect environmental information, which is then transferred back to the sink node. As the wireless sensor nodes are battery powered, the operation of nodes is subject to energy restrictions. To prolong the lifetime of WSNs, this paper integrates wireless sensor node with solar power generation technology to enable wireless sensor nodes to obtain energy by sunlight. Meanwhile, an energy-aware routing mechanism is applied to select routes with sufficient energy to transfer the data, thus, extending battery lifetime, and enhancing the possibility of sustainable survival of nodes.