Minimizing the power consumption in Raspberry Pi to use as a remote WSN gateway

The reliability of Raspberry Pi minicomputer as a remote gateway in a wireless sensor network requires an analysis of power consumption. Due to the limited energy conditions, when a station is powered by a photovoltaic system, it is essential to reduce its energy consumption to maximize the lifetime of the network. This paper presents a comparative analysis of Raspberry Pi power consumption profile under multiple settings: reduced hardware elements, installation of different operating systems and, downclock CPU (700 MHz to 100 MHz), SDRAM (400 MHz to 100 MHz) and GPU (250 MHz to 50 MHz) units. Based on the results, the energy consumption is reduced up to 20% which is equivalent to a saving of 0.25 W. The minimum Raspberry Pi power consumption reached is 0.97 W.