Energy performance of Internet of Things (IoT) networks for pipeline monitoring

Pipelines are the most convenient ways to transport fluids (e.g., water, oil, and gas). However, leakage of fluids into the environment results in resource wastage (primarily water, which is becoming a scarce resource) and environmental pollution (in the case of leakage of toxic fluids like oil and gas). Emerging technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), Artificial Intelligence (AI), distributed computing, and cloud computing enable continuous monitoring of pipelines to detect leakages and corrosion on the pipeline. The main challenge with using battery-powered sensor nodes to monitor pipelines is the energy constraint, necessitating frequent battery replacement. Thus, there is a need to develop energy-saving mechanisms to prolong the lifetime of these sensor nodes. In this paper, we use the diffusion approximation modelling framework in which the data from the experimental testbed are used to model the dynamics of the battery’s energy content and to estimate the mean and variance of the device’s lifetime. The novelty in the proposed diffusion model of the battery of an IoT node is the introduction of multiple energy thresholds that split the energy state-space of the battery into multiple energy-saving regimes. As the battery discharges, the node gradually transitions into energy-saving regimes by reconfiguring some of its parameters to reduce energy consumption (sometimes at the cost of trading off some performance metrics). We investigate the impact of energy-saving regimes or the number of thresholds on the node’s lifetime.