Wakeup signal length optimization combined with payload aggregation and FEC in WSNs

Abstract:
Energy efficiency in wireless sensor networks became a key question. There are various methods to achieve longer battery life in small devices. We consider delay-tolerant wireless sensor networks with battery-operated nodes and use data-aggregation to cut the size of packet overhead caused by headers. In this paper a formula is presented to determine the optimal wakeup signal length, which minimizes the energy consumed for waking up nodes in sleep mode via a special radio signal. The demonstrated calculations and graphs are based on the investigation of an existing system. The contribution of this paper is a general method to improve the energy efficiency of wireless sensor networks by using the optimal length of the wakeup signal in case of different amounts of payload aggregation and Forward Error Correction methods. The presented results can be accommodated to arbitrary packet-based wireless protocols.