Sensor node lifetime prolonging

Battery life extension is the main driver for energy- efficient wireless sensor network (WSN) design. Sensor nodes (SNs), as constituents of WSN, are battery-powered devices and have limited amount of energy available. We overcome this limitation by using techniques that reduce the consumption of energy effectively. In this article, we use a technique called duty cycle extension, in order to overcome the problem of time synchronization and save energy. We analyze a case when SN operates under harsh environmental conditions, i.e. when there is large percentage of incorrectly received packets. By applying two low power modes we study how time scales affect duty cycle ratio by varying the time interval between packet transmissions over three orders of magnitude, from 1 second to 3600 seconds. We assume that the number of losses packets varies from 40% up to 70%. For inter-packet intervals from one second to one hour and different SN´s low power modes, by implementing a duty cycle extension technique, an increase of battery capacity from 7% up to 323%, per single year working period is achieved.