Reconfigurable energy-efficient wireless sensor networks for real-time data acquisition

This paper presents an energy-efficient data acquisition scheme that enables continued data sampling and on-node data feature extraction, based on the Dynamic Voltage Scaling concept. A reservation-based Time Division Multiple Access protocol was employed to allow staggered data transmissions within a sensor cluster. As a result, sensor nodes that were scheduled to transmit their data later in sequential order could take advantage of the ldquoextrardquo time allocated to slow down the speed of data processing by lowering the supply voltage, thereby reducing energy consumption. The design of reconfigurable sensor nodes was demonstrated through the integration of a Crossbow Imote2 platform with a customized sensor board. To evaluate the data acquisition scheme, a sensor network was designed that featured autonomous sensor cluster head selection, time synchronization, and dynamic allocation of computation times at the sensor node level. It was found that energy reduction of up to 50% could be achieved, which effectively translates into prolonged service life of the sensor network. The study demonstrates the ability of reconfiguration techniques in improving energy efficiency in sensor networks.