Energy-efficient Wireless Mesh Networks with IEEE 802.11ba: A New Architecture

Abstract

In traditional IoT applications, energy saving is crucial, whereas the demand for high bandwidth is not frequent. Nonetheless, a new generation of IoT applications show a wider and varying range of requirements, where bandwidth or delay become key performance indicators to consider, which can be satisfied by technologies like Wi-Fi. However, Wi-Fi does not provide a long link range, and it exhibits a high energy consumption. To solve these issues, we propose a Wi-Fi mesh architecture where devices are equipped with a secondary, Wake-up Radio (WuR) interface, based on the new IEEE 802.11ba amendment. A WuR allows the main radio to remain in a power-saving state for long periods. Simulation results demonstrate that this architecture drastically reduces energy consumption, while keeping delay figures similar to those of traditional, single-interface approaches. To our best knowledge, this work pioneers the exploration of WuR's practicality in optimizing energy consumption in Wi-Fi-based mesh networks.