How to sleep, control and transfer data in an energy constrained wireless sensor network

We propose a communication theoretic framework to model energy consumption in ultra low-power transceivers. We use it to estimate the optimal time split between sleep, control (page, resource allocation etc.) and data transfer modes. We specify the necessary conditions for the sleep duty cycle to minimize energy consumption. We consider practical issues in existing transceivers, replace the information theoretic bounds with practical signaling techniques and re-estimate sleep duty cycle. We propose complementary network architectures to decouple access control from data transfer. We explore the design space captured by the framework with initial simulations and include a comparison of 802.15.4 against a fundamental energy limit. Results show a significant reduction in energy consumption and control overhead.