Passive Wake-up Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks

In resource limited mobile computing devices (wireless sensor networks), energy saving is a critical design task. However, existing wake-up mechanisms encounter a critical trade-off between energy consumption and response time. In this paper, we propose a passive RF wake up (PRFW) scheme instead of time-based scheme to wake up node that indeed needs to wake up. The PRFW scheme is enabled by a PRFW hardware module sensing radio signal from other nodes. Analysis of energy consumption and delay shows that the power saving capability and wake-up delay can be improved by using the PRFW scheme.