Modeling and Comparison of Delay and Energy Cost of IoT Data Transfers

Communication is often considered as the most costly component of a wireless sensor node. As a result, a variety of technologies and protocols aim to reduce the energy consumption for the communication especially in the Internet of Things context. In order to select the best suitable technology for a given use case, a tool that allows the comparison of these options is needed. The goal of this paper is to introduce a new modular modeling framework that enables a comparison of various technologies based on analytical calculations. We chose to model the cost for a single data transfer of arbitrary application data amounts in order to provide flexibility regarding the data amount and traffic patterns. The modeling approach covers the stack traversal of application data and thus in comparison to other approaches includes the required protocol overhead directly. By applying our models to different data amounts, we are able to show tradeoffs between various technologies and enable comparisons for different scenarios. In addition, our results reveal the impact of design decisions that can help to identify future development challenges.