MATES: A MATLAB-based analytical energy harvesting simulator

Network lifetime is a critical concern in wireless sensor networks, especially in applications like smart grid communications where replacement of nodes may be costly and infeasible. Energy harvesting has risen as a promising solution to this problem. In this paper, we present MATES an energy-harvesting wireless sensor network simulator written in MATLAB. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the simulator, we used it to implement and simulate the Distributed Transport for Sensor Network (DTSN) protocol as well as its energy-harvesting variants, namely the naive (DTSN-EH) and the intelligent (DTSNEHI) versions. We compared the performance of the DTSN variants and analyzed them in terms of goodput, average and maximum delay, and total number of transmissions. Our results show that the intelligent energy-harvesting system outperforms its naive counterpart. In terms of deployment issues, energy-harvesting obviates the problem of energy depletion in conventional battery-operated systems.