Experimental validation of a battery model for low-power nodes in Wireless Sensor Networks

Energy consumption is a major problem in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) since in most scenarios nodes operate on batteries with reduced size and low capacity. Battery lifetime estimation is therefore crucial to evaluate the network behavior over time. In addition, battery lifetime estimation is a major challenge since it depends on many factors, such as the duty cycle of supported applications and the intrinsic chemical reactions within the batteries. Several battery models have been proposed to deal with battery lifetime estimation. However, most of the available models address only high-capacity batteries. This paper discusses a method for extracting the parameters for the Kinetic Battery Model (KiBaM) used within WSN context. The target is to define a battery model that helps to estimate the lifetime of nodes using low-capacity batteries and which operate in a duty cycle scheme. Results show that KiBaM is an adequate model for WSNs since it presents low error when compared with experimental results using real batteries.