Towards a Realistic Energy Model for Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy consumption is one of the most critical protocol properties in a wireless sensor network. Therefore, a precise energy model is required for the evaluation of protocols. In addition to evaluation, an energy model can also be used for on-line energy accounting. After processing user queries, nodes aware of the energy model can send an energy bill towards the network´s data sink. This allows the user to adjust future queries to be more energy efficient. The contribution of this paper is twofold: First, a theoretical energy model based on simple finite automata is presented. This model can be used for online accounting, simulation and generation of a-priori knowledge. Second, the proposed theoretical model is backed up by practical measurements using a new measurement device called SNMD, which also offers management functions for sensor-net testbeds. Therewith, output of the theoretical model can be compared to and validated against by real-world measurements.