Energy Consumption in Wireless Sensor Networks: Measuring Energy Consumption and Lifetime

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been intenselystudied because of their potential applications andtechnological challenges. However, most analysis ofWSN performance has used only computer simulations, with greatly simplified assumptions about theperformance of the underlying circuits. WSN networklifetime depends upon communication protocols. TheGossip-Based Sleep Protocol (GSP), implements routingand MAC functions in an energy conserving manner. However, measuring network lifetime with even aprotocol as simple as GSP is problematic. Multipleapproaches are described for measuring energyconsumption in terms of transmit and receive phases, minimum voltage supply required for operation andtransmit power. Also multiple methods are describedfor measuring the lifetime of a sensor node anddescribing end-of-lifetime behavior. The final resultis a model of energy consumption describing theperformance of GSP on the Mica2 platform, which isthen compared with other models. Academicresearchers, professors, students and industrialresearchers in the field of WSNs or concerned aboutenergy consumption by general wireless communicationsdevices will be interested in this book.