A Task Based Sensor-Centric Model for Overall Energy Consumption

Sensors have limited resources so it is important to manage the resources efficiently to maximize their use. A sensor´s battery is a crucial resource as it singly determines the lifetime of sensor network applications. Since these devices are useful only when they are able to communicate with the world, radio transceiver of a sensor as an I/O and a costly unit plays a key role in its lifetime. This resource often consumes a big portion of the sensor´s energy as it must be active most of the time to announce the existence of the sensor in the network. As such the radio component has to deal with its embedded sensor network whose parameters and operations have significant effects on the sensor´s lifetime. In existing energy models, hardware is considered, but the environment and the network´s parameters did not receive adequate attention. Energy consumption components of traditional network architecture are often considered individually and separately, and their influences on each other have not been considered in these approaches. In this paper we consider all possible tasks of a sensor in its embedded network and propose an energy management model. We categorize these tasks in five energy consuming constituents. The sensor´s Energy Consumption (EC) is modeled on its energy consuming constituents and their input parameters and tasks. The sensor´s EC can thus be reduced by managing and executing efficiently the tasks of its constituents. The proposed approach can be effective for power management, and it also can be used to guide the design of energy efficient wireless sensor networks through network parameterization and optimization.