Harnessing battery recovery effect in wireless sensor networks: Experiments and analysis

Many applications of wireless sensor networks rely on batteries. But most batteries are not simple energy reservoirs, and can exhibit battery recovery effect. That is, the deliverable energy in a battery can be self-replenished, if left idling for sufficient time. As a viable approach for energy optimisation, we made several contributions towards harnessing battery recovery effect in sensor networks. 1) We empirically examine the gain of battery runtime of sensor devices due to battery recovery effect, and affirm its significant benefit in sensor networks. We also observe a saturation threshold, beyond which more idle time will contribute only little to battery recovery. 2) Based on our experiments, we propose a Markov chain model to capture battery recovery considering saturation threshold and random sensing activities, by which we can study the effectiveness of duty cycling and buffering. 3) We devise a simple distributed duty cycle scheme to take advantage of battery recovery using pseudo-random sequences, and analyse its trade-off between the induced latency of data delivery and duty cycle rates.