Dynamic Power Management in Wireless Sensor Networks: State-of-the-Art

In the last few years, interest in wireless sensor networks has increased considerably. These networks can be useful for a large number of applications, including habitat monitoring, structural health monitoring, pipeline monitoring, transportation, precision agriculture, supply chain management, and many more. Typically, a wireless sensor network consists of a large number of simple nodes which operate with exhaustible batteries, unattended. Manual replacement or recharging the batteries is not an easy or desirable task. Hence, how energy is utilized by the various hardware subsystems of individual nodes directly affects the scope and usefulness of the entire network. This paper provides a comprehensive assessment of state-of-the-art of dynamic power management (DPM) in wireless sensor networks. It investigates aspects of power dissipation in a node and analyses the strength and limitations of selective switching, dynamic frequency, and voltage scaling.