DoE-based performance optimization of energy management in sensor nodes powered by tunable energy-harvesters

An energy-harvester-powered wireless sensor node is a complicated system with many design parameters. To investigate the various trade-offs among these parameters, it is desirable to explore the multi-dimensional design space quickly. However, due to the large number of parameters and costly simulation CPU times, it is often difficult or even impossible to explore the design space via simulation. A design of experiment (DoE) approach using the response surface model (RSM) technique can enable fast design space exploration of a complete wireless sensor node powered by a tunable energy harvester. As a proof of concept, a software toolkit has been developed which implements the DoE-based design flow and incorporates the energy harvester, tuning controller and wireless sensor node. Several test scenarios are considered, which illustrate how the proposed approach permits the designer to adjust a wide range of system parameters and evaluate the effect almost instantly but still with high accuracy‥