Battery discharge characteristics of wireless sensor nodes: an experimental analysis

Abstract

Battery life extension is the principal driver for energy-efficient wireless sensor network (WSN) design. However, there is growing awareness that in order to truly maximize the operating life of battery-powered systems such as sensor nodes, it is important to discharge the battery in a manner that maximizes the amount of charge extracted from it. In spite of this, there is little published data that quantitatively analyzes the effectiveness with which modern wireless sensor nodes discharge their batteries, under different operating conditions. In this paper, we report on systematic experiments that we conducted to quantify the impact of key wireless sensor network design and environmental parameters on battery performance. Our testbed consists of MICA2DOT Motes, a commercial lithium- coin battery, and a suite of techniques for measuring battery per- formance. We evaluate the extent to which known electrochemical phenomena, such as rate-capacity characteristics, charge recov- ery and thermal effects, can play a role in governing the selection of key WSN design parameters such as power levels, packet sizes, etc. We demonstrate that battery characteristics significantly alter and complicate otherwise well-understood trade-offs in WSN design. In particular, we analyze the non-trivial implications of battery characteristics on WSN power control strategies, and find that a battery-aware approach to power level selection leads to a 52% increase in battery efficiency. We expect our results to serve as a quantitative basis for future research in designing battery-efficient sensing applications and protocols.