Power consumption measurement and clock synchronization on low-power wireless sensor networks

Smart Grid becomes a hot topic in recent years in carbon reduction as well as environmental protection. However, in order to facilitate efficient use of energy to solve energy shortage problem, it must be supported by a robust two-way communication network, and this further stimulates related researches on wireless sensor networks. This paper studies two major issues in wireless sensor networks. The first is the power consumption of wireless sensors. We compared ZigBee with Low-Power WiFi on their power consumption. In our experiments, in order to precisely measure the low power consumption of ZigBee and Low-Power WiFi, a digital oscilloscope was utilized to help us to compare their power consumption in start-up and stand-by statuses. The second issue is clock synchronization. Because time accuracy is a big issue for disaster prevention, the clock of every sensor node must be synchronized. In this paper, we established a clock synchronizing system which adopts Network Time Protocol (NTP) with Low-Power WiFi devices.