Prototyping an Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Network Application Using HarvWSNet

In this article, the HarvWSNet simulation framework is used to explore the feasibility of a structural health monitoring application based on a wireless sensor network. The aim is to show the value of a simulation-based approach for the architecture exploration and prototyping of severely energy constrained applications. In the target application, each network node performs a reading of temperature and/or acceleration and transmits the data to a base station every given period. A second objective of this work is to test the relevance of a power management algorithm whose role is to adapt the application quality of service to the instantaneous state of the energy harvesting module. The final goal is to propose a 'perpetually powered' node architecture compatible with the user application requirements.