Fuzzy power management for energy harvesting Wireless Sensor Nodes

Power management is an important issue in the design of Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks (EH-WSNs). In this kind of networks, each Energy Harvesting Node (EH-node) must dynamically adapt its performance in order to avoid power failures while maintaining a good quality of service. The power management policy is implemented on each node by a Power Manager (PM). Designing a PM is challenging because the harvested energy is time varying, and the amount of energy that will be harvested in the future is hard to predict. In this work, we present Fuzzyman, a novel PM based on fuzzy control theory. Because of the unpredictability of the harvested energy, fuzzy control theory constitutes an appropriate framework to tackle the problem of designing PM for EH-nodes. We evaluate the performance of Fuzzyman by comparing it to a state of the art approach via extensive trace-driven network simulations. Results show that Fuzzyman achieves more efficient utilization of the harvested energy.