Average power consumption breakdown of wireless sensor network nodes using IPv6 over LLNs

Abstract

This paper presents a simple but still powerful approach for the analysis of the average power consumption of a sensor node using the IPv6 over Low power and Lossy Networks (LLN) stack, which is one of the most widely adopted and promising communication stacks. Power consumption is broken down according to the node states (i.e. CPU, IRQ, LPM, Tx, Rx) and according to the network protocols (e.g. CoAP, RPL, 6LoWPAN, Contiki MAC), identifying the relative weight of each protocol in the total energy consumption for several configurations. Results show that the Low Power Listening (LPL) mechanism of the radio duty cycling layer and RPL control messages have the highest impact on the total energy consumption, while the application's report rate has a very low impact for periods over 60 seconds.