Design, development, and performance evaluation of a low-cost, low-power wake-up radio system for wireless sensor networks

Energy-efficient operation is a challenge for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). A common method employed for this purpose is duty-cycled operation, which extends battery lifetime yet incurs several types of energy wastes and challenges. A promising alternative to duty-cycled operation is the use of wake-up radio (WuR), where the main microcontroller unit (MCU) and transceiver, that is, the two most energy-consuming elements, are kept in energy-saving mode until a special signal from another node is received by an attached, secondary, ultra-low power receiver. Next, this so-called wake-up receiver generates an interrupt to activate the receiver node's MCU and, consequently, the main radio. This article presents a complete wake-up radio design that targets simplicity in design for the monetary cost and flexibility concerns, along with a good operation range and very low power consumption. Both the transmitter (WuTx) and the receiver (WuRx) designs are presented with the accompanying physical experiments for several design alternatives. Detailed analysis of the end system is provided in terms of both operational distance (more than 10 m) and current consumption (less than 1 μA). As a reference, a commercial WuR system is analyzed and compared to the presented system by expressing the trade-offs and advantages of both systems.

[1]  Emanuel M. Popovici,et al.  Nano-Power Wireless Wake-Up Receiver With Serial Peripheral Interface , 2011, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications.

[2]  Sébastien Roy,et al.  Low-Power Wake-Up Radio for Wireless Sensor Networks , 2010, Mob. Networks Appl..

[3]  Wendi B. Heinzelman,et al.  Time-Knocking: A novel addressing mechanism for wake-up receivers , 2012, 2012 IEEE 8th International Conference on Wireless and Mobile Computing, Networking and Communications (WiMob).

[4]  Jan M. Rabaey,et al.  A 65 μW, 1.9 GHz RF to digital baseband wakeup receiver for wireless sensor nodes , 2007, 2007 IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference.

[5]  José Luis,et al.  Diseño e implementación de un módulo hardware de bajo coste para redes basadas en el estándar IEEE 802.15.4 para la Internet Futura , 2010 .

[6]  Joseph A. Paradiso,et al.  CargoNet: a low-cost micropower sensor node exploiting quasi-passive wakeup for adaptive asychronous monitoring of exceptional events , 2007, SenSys '07.

[7]  Juan José Serrano,et al.  RFID Based Acoustic Wake-Up System for Underwater Sensor Networks , 2011, 2011 IEEE Eighth International Conference on Mobile Ad-Hoc and Sensor Systems.

[8]  Koen Langendoen,et al.  A prototype low-cost wakeup radio for the 868 MHz band , 2009, Int. J. Sens. Networks.

[9]  Alanson P. Sample,et al.  The Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform , 2013 .

[10]  Stefan Mahlknecht,et al.  An Ultra Low Power Wakeup Receiver for Wireless Sensor Nodes , 2009, 2009 Third International Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications.

[11]  Cem Ersoy,et al.  Wake-up receivers for wireless sensor networks: benefits and challenges , 2009, IEEE Wireless Communications.

[12]  Petri Mähönen,et al.  Radio-triggered Wake-ups with Addressing Capabilities for Extremely Low Power Sensor Network Applications , 2008, 2008 IEEE 19th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications.

[13]  Wendi B. Heinzelman,et al.  Feasibility and Benefits of Passive RFID Wake-Up Radios for Wireless Sensor Networks , 2010, 2010 IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference GLOBECOM 2010.

[14]  Yan Zhang,et al.  An analytical model for energy efficiency analysis of different wakeup radio schemes , 2009, 2009 IEEE 20th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications.

[15]  Petri Mähönen,et al.  Radio-triggered Wake-ups with Addressing Capabilities for Extremely Low Power Sensor Network Applications , 2009, Int. J. Wirel. Inf. Networks.

[16]  Xiaoyan Wang,et al.  A 2.4GHz/915MHz 51µW wake-up receiver with offset and noise suppression , 2010, 2010 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference - (ISSCC).

[17]  S. Gambini,et al.  A 52 $\mu$ W Wake-Up Receiver With $-$ 72 dBm Sensitivity Using an Uncertain-IF Architecture , 2009, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[18]  Jie Wang,et al.  A Method to Prolong the Lifetime of Wireless Sensor Network , 2009, 2009 5th International Conference on Wireless Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing.

[19]  DemirkolIlker,et al.  Design, development, and performance evaluation of a low-cost, low-power wake-up radio system for wireless sensor networks , 2013 .

[20]  John A. Stankovic,et al.  Radio-Triggered Wake-Up for Wireless Sensor Networks , 2005, Real-Time Systems.

[21]  Leonhard M. Reindl,et al.  Low power wake-up receiver for wireless sensor nodes , 2010, 2010 Sixth International Conference on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing.

[22]  S. Saruwatari,et al.  A Novel Wireless Wake-Up Mechanism for Energy-Efficient Ubiquitous Networks , 2009, 2009 IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops.