Poster Abstract: An Ultra-Low Power Wake up Radio with Addressing and Retransmission Capabilities for Advanced Energy Efficient MAC Protocols

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are today widely employed in real world applications. However, their lifetime is still challenging and the most critical limitation for the success of this technology. In fact, wireless sensors nodes, which are the backbone of the network, are typically powered by limited energy storage devices (i.e. small batteries or supercaps) and their short lifetime is a critical issue. To overcome this limitation a major research effort focuses on reducing power consumption, especially of communication, as the radio transceiver is one of the highest power consumers. A critical energy-efficiency issue in WSN transceivers is idle listening. Wake-up radio receivers are very effective in minimizing idle listening. This fact has resulted in a significant number of wake-up radio receiver architectures proposed in last decade. In this work we present an advanced design and implementation of an advanced wake-up radio that is capable of both processing the received data (i.e. for addressing) and retransmitting data or wake up messages to the neighbours when necessary. With these features it can be possible to further enhance the energy efficiency of the communication and allowing ultra-low power multi-hop communication. Experimental results demonstrate the functionality as well as the power and range of the proposed design which is ready for future energy efficient and pure-asynchronous MAC protocols.