Energy Efficient Management of Heterogeneous Multi-Hop Wireless Networks

• US 20160212698A1
• Filed: 01/20/2015
• Published: 07/21/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 01/20/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. (Mitsubishi Electric Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. (Mitsubishi Electric Corporation)
• Inventors: Guo, Jianlin, Liu, Kaikai, Orlik, Philip, Parsons, Kieran
• Granted Patent: US 9,736,771 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/14 Relay systems
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 45/20 Hop count for routing purposes, e.g. TTL
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 28/0221 power availability or consumption
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 40/10 based on available power or energy
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 52/0203 in the radio access network or backbone network of wireless communication networks
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 52/0216 using a pre-established activity schedule, e.g. traffic indication frame
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 52/0229 where the received signal is a wanted signal
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 52/0261 managing power supply demand, e.g. depending on battery level
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/00 Reducing energy consumption in communication networks
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/70 in wireless communication networks

Abstract

A wireless multi-hope network of nodes including data nodes and at least one sink node. The data nodes include battery-powered nodes (BPNs) having active and sleep periods and mains-powered nodes (MPNs) having only active periods, wherein each data node transmits the packets only within corresponding active periods. A BPN includes a transceiver for transmitting and receiving data packets and a processor for determining a schedule of active and sleep periods of the BPN independently from the active and sleep periods of other data nodes in the network and independently from commands transmitted by the sink node, and a battery for providing energy to the transceiver and the processor. The processor switches the transceiver ON and OFF according to the schedule.

Claims

1. A network of nodes including data nodes and at least one sink node, wherein the network is a wireless multi-hope network in which packets are exchanged between the sink node and the data nodes in a multi-hop manner such that there is at least one data node exchanging the packets with the sink node through at least one intermediate data node relaying the packets between the data node and the sink node, the data nodes include battery-powered nodes (BPNs) having active and sleep periods and mains-powered nodes (MPNs) having only active periods, wherein each data node transmits the packets only within corresponding active periods, a BPN comprising:

a transceiver for transmitting and receiving data packets;

a processor for determining a schedule of active and sleep periods of the BPN independently from the active and sleep periods of other data nodes in the network and independently from commands transmitted by the sink node, wherein the processor switches the transceiver ON and OFF according to the schedule; and

a battery for providing energy to the transceiver and the processor.

2. The network of claim 1, wherein the processor of the BPN determines the schedule based on information internal to the BPN using activities of the network sensed by the BPN.

3. The network of claim 1, wherein the BPN further comprises:

a memory for buffering the data packets to be transmitted to the sink node, wherein the processor determines the schedule based on a number of the data packets in the memory.

4. The network of claim 1, wherein the BPN transmits a wakeup signal at the beginning of each active period.

5. The network of claim 1, wherein different BPNs have different schedule of active and sleep periods.

6. The network of claim 1, wherein the processor of the BPN determines a routing path from the BPN to the sink node reducing a number of the BPNs transmitting or overhearing the data packets transmitted on the path, and wherein the transceiver transmits the data packets to a parent node starting the routing path.

7. The network of claim 6, wherein the parent node is battery-powered, and wherein the BPN transmits the data packets to the parent node upon overhearing a wakeup signal or data packets transmitted by the parent node.

8. The network of claim 1, wherein the sink node initiates a routing path discovery by broadcasting control messages including Destination Oriented Directed Acyclic Graph (DODAG) Information Object (DIO) messages, Destination Advertisement Object (DAO) messages, and DODAG Information Solicitation (DIS) messages, wherein each data nodes determine and update the DIO messages with energy saving metric including a power source (PS) metric identifying whether a data node is the BPN or the MPN, a battery-powered node count (BNC) metric storing a number of the BPNs along a routing path, a minimum battery level (MBL) metric storing a minimum level among the BPNs along the routing path, and a battery-powered overhearing count (BOC) metric storing a number of times that BPNs of the network overhear the data packets transmitted on the routing path.

9. The network of claim 8, wherein the processor of the BPN determines a set of parent nodes, each parent node starting a corresponding routing path to the sink node, and selects a default parent node having a minimum value of

10. The network of claim 8, wherein the processor of the BPN determines probabilistically a set of active parent nodes, each parent node starting a corresponding routing path to the sink node, and selects from the set a default parent node having a minimum average battery energy consumption value avg(P(N,S)) determined according to

11. The network of claim 6, wherein the BPN transmits the data packets over the routing path if a minimum level among the BPNs along the routing path is greater than a threshold.

12. The network of claim 3, wherein the processors determines an idle listening time of the BPN proportional to the number of packets in the memory.

13. A battery-powered node (BPN) for forming a heterogeneous wireless multi-hope network of nodes including data nodes and at least one sink node, wherein the data nodes include battery-powered nodes (BPNs) and mains-powered nodes (MPNs), comprising:

a transceiver for transmitting and receiving data packets;

a processor for determining a schedule of active and sleep periods of the BPN independently from the active and sleep periods of other data nodes in the network and independently from commands transmitted by the sink node, wherein the processor switches the transceiver ON and OFF according to the schedule; and

a battery for providing energy to the transceiver and the processor.

14. The BPN of claim 13, wherein the processor determines the schedule based on information internal to the BPN using activities of the network observed by the BPN.

15. The BPN of claim 13, further comprising:

a memory for buffering the data packets, wherein the processor determines the schedule based on a number of the data packets in the memory.

16. The BPN of claim 13, wherein the BPN transmits a wakeup signal at the beginning of each active period.

17. The BPN of claim 13, wherein the BPN determines a routing path from the BPN to the sink node reducing a number of the BPNs transmitting or overhearing the data packets transmitted on the routing path, and wherein the transceiver transmits the data packets to a parent node starting the routing path.

18. The BPN of claim 17, wherein the BPN determines the parent node using energy saving metric including a power source (PS) metric identifying whether a data node is the BPN or the MPN, a battery-powered node count (BNC) metric storing a number of the BPNs along a routing path, a minimum battery level (MBL) metric storing a minimum level among the BPNs along the routing path, and a battery-powered overhearing count (BOC) metric storing a number of times that BPNs of the network overhear the data packets transmitted on the routing path.

19. A method for managing a battery-powered node (BPN) forming a heterogeneous wireless multi-hope network of nodes including data nodes and at least one sink node, wherein the data nodes include battery-powered nodes (BPNs) and mains-powered nodes (MPNs), comprising:

determining a schedule of active and sleep periods of the BPN independently from the active and sleep periods of other data nodes in the network and independently from commands transmitted by the sink node;

switching a transceiver of the BPN ON and OFF according to the schedule;

transmitting a wakeup signal at the beginning of each active period;

determining a routing path from the BPN to the sink node reducing a number of the BPNs transmitting or overhearing data packets transmitted on the routing path; and

transmitting the data packets to a parent node starting the routing path during the active period.

20. The method of claim 19, further comprising:

determining the parent node using energy saving metric including a power source (PS) metric identifying whether a data node is the BPN or the MPN, a battery-powered node count (BNC) metric storing a number of the BPNs along a routing path, a minimum battery level (MBL) metric storing a minimum level among the BPNs along the routing path, and a battery-powered overhearing count (BOC) metric storing a number of times that BPNs of the network overhear the data packets transmitted on the routing path.