Feedback control-based energy management for ubiquitous sensor networks

Slow development in battery technology and rapid advances in ultra-capacitor design have motivated us to investigate the possibility of using capacitors as the sole energy storage for wireless sensor nodes to support ubiquitous computing. The starting point of this work is TwinStar, which uses ultra-capacitor as the only energy storage unit. To efficiently use the harvested energy, we design and implement feedback control techniques to match the activity of sensor nodes with the dynamic energy supply from environments. We conduct system evaluation by deploying sensor devices under three typical real-world settings-indoor, outdoor, and mobile backpack under a wide range of system settings. Results indicate our feedback control can effectively utilize energy and ensure system sustainability. Nodes running feedback control have longer operational time than the ones running non-feedback control.