Synchronising Energy Harvesting and Data Packets in a Wireless Sensor

Erol Gelenbe
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Erol Gelenbe: Intelligent Systems and Networks Group, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College, London SW7 2AZ, UK

Energies, 2015, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-14

Abstract: We consider a wireless sensor node that gathers energy through harvesting and reaps data through sensing. The node has a wireless transmitter that sends out a data packet whenever there is at least one “energy packet” and one “data packet”, where an energy packet represents the amount of accumulated energy at the node that can allow the transmission of a data packet. We show that such a system is unstable when both the energy storage space and the data backlog buffer approach infinity, and we obtain the stable stationary solution when both buffers are finite. We then show that if a single energy packet is not sufficient to transmit a data packet, there are conditions under which the system is stable, and we provide the explicit expression for the joint probability distribution of the number of energy and data packets in the system. Since the two flows of energy and data can be viewed as flows that are instantaneously synchronised, this paper also provides a mathematical analysis of a fundamental problem in computer science related to the stability of the “join” synchronisation primitive.

Keywords: energy packets; data packets; wireless sensor nodes; instability of synchronisation primitives; stable operation of synchronised flows (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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