Modeling and Analysis: Energy Harvesting in the Internet of Things

In the Internet of Things(IoT), the size constraint of those small and embedded devices limits the network lifetime because limited energy can be stored on these devices. In recent years, energy harvesting technology has attracted increasing attention, due to its ability to extend the network lifetime significantly. However, the performance of IoT devices powered by energy harvesting sources has not been fully analyzed and understood. In this paper, we model the energy harvesting process in IoT devices using slotted Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA /CA) mechanism of IEEE 802.15.4 standard, and analyze the performance in terms of delay and throughput. Our new model successfully integrates the energy harvesting process and binary backoff process through a unified Markov chain model. Finally, the new model is validated by simulation and the throughput errors between simulation and analytical model are no more than 6%. We demonstrate the application of the model with different energy harvesting rate corresponding to different sources such as solar and vibration energy harvesters.