Power management and energy harvesting techniques for wireless sensor nodes

Wireless sensor networks, WSNs, are large networks composed of small sensor nodes, SNs, with limited computer resources capable for gathering, data processing and communicating. Energy consumption represents a barrier challenge in many sensor network applications that require long lifetimes, usually an order of several years. Sensor nodes, as constituents of wireless sensor networks, are battery driven devices and operate on an extremely frugal energy budget. Conventional low-power design techniques and hardware architectures only provide partial solutions which are insufficient for sensor networks with energy-hungry sensors. This paper surveys several techniques used in today´s wireless sensor networks with order to surpass the problem of energy consumption, power management and energy harvesting. It provides an insight into how various power reduction techniques can be used and orchestrated such that satisfactory performance can be achieved within a given energy budget.