Mesh Networking for Intermittently Powered Devices: Architecture and Challenges

Recent advances in low-power computing enable energy harvesting-powered devices, even in energy scarce conditions. This reduces the reliance on batteries in Internet of Things devices, reducing the cost and enabling new application domains. However, energy scarcity requires devices to operate intermittently, with minimal stored energy and where high-cost radio frequency (RF) communication dominates the power consumption, so transceivers are disabled most of the time. For deployment in challenging environments without high capability neighboring devices, a peer-to-peer topology for intermittently powered devices is required. To remove the requirement for high capability devices, we categorize four receiver types harnessing RF power transfer for a wake-up from other intermittently powered devices. This mesh networking of homogeneous nodes could enable applications where high power coordinators are undesirable or impossible. In this article, we identify the cross-layer challenges of mesh networking with intermittently powered devices and we describe the node receiver hardware required for peer-to-peer networking with intermittently powered devices. We conclude with a case study of transceiver power consumption in this context.