Radio-triggered wake-up capability for sensor networks

Power management is an important technique to prolong the lifespan of sensor networks. Many power-management protocols employ wake-up/sleep schedules, which are often complicated and inefficient. We present power management schemes that eliminate such wake-up periods unless the node indeed needs to wake up. This type of wake-up capability is enabled by a new radio-triggered hardware component. We evaluate the potential power saving in terms of the lifespan of a sensor network application, using experiment data and SPICE circuit simulations. Comparing the result with always-on and rotation-based power management schemes, we find the radio-triggered scheme saves 98% of the energy used in the always-on scheme, and saves over 70% of the energy used in the rotation-based scheme. Consequently, the lifespan increases from 3.3 days (always-on) or 49.5 days (rotation-based) to 178 days (radio-triggered). Furthermore, a store-energy technique can extend operating distance from 10 feet to 22 feet, or even longer if longer latency is acceptable. We also present amplification and radio-triggered IDs which can further enhance performance.