Energy harvesting aware protocol for 802.11-based Internet of Things network

This paper presents a modification of the routing protocol for the 802.11 networks to use the energy harvesting information for routing decision in order to prolong the lifetime of the network. Energy harvesting is the activity of nodes in the network to harvest energy from the environment, especially when no sustainable energy supply exists. This activity should be supported by the network protocol to optimally use the energy harvested and to support the continuous operation of nodes in the network. By using the residual energy and the energy harvesting information along with the hop count, the routing algorithm can decide an energy efficient path to deliver message in the network. Simulation using Network Simulator 3 (NS-3) tool has been conducted to investigate and validate the modified routing protocol, with variation of low and high energy harvested condition. The result shows that in low energy harvested condition, this effort can make the network lifetime 29.7% longer, while in high energy harvested condition it can successfully prevent the occurrence of the energy hole problem in the network.