CAREER: Adaptive Power Management for Supercapacitor-Operated Sustainable Wireless Sensor Networks

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Long-life, maintenance-free, self-powered wireless sensor networks (WSNs) could potentially benefit many applications using WSNs with nodes that do not have access to continuous, conditioned power. However, the lifetime of self-powered WSNs has been severely limited by the cycle life and a short life span of rechargeable batteries (RBs), the current popular storage device for energy harvesting wireless sensors. Alternatively, supercapacitors (SCs) have cycle lives on the order of millions and a life span of 20 years or more. Recent advances in SC technology may lead to a paradigm shift from a battery-based to a SC-based design if the adaptive power management can be established to maintain the sustainability of the WSNs, which will generate great interest from many long-life applications.This research project aims to establish the theoretical foundation and applied framework of adaptive power management for supercapacitor-powered wireless sensors, which enables the next generation of perpetual, sustainable operation of environmentally-powered WSNs. This project consists of three main research components: (1) investigate how supercapacitor device characteristics affect power management policies and provide guidelines for SC-powered embedded systems; (2) create practical and accurate SC models for supporting power management research in energy harvesting WSNs; (3) design the SC-aware power management framework that enables sustainable operation of WSNs and evaluate it in laboratory testing and practical SC-based energy harvesting WSNs. This project will significantly advance the understanding of the next-generation SC-based energy harvesting WSNs, and lead to WSNs that can exist for decades on weak ambient energy and provide services required by important applications. In addition, the SC model and power management framework can also have impact on other portable embedded electronics. The educational components of this project include (1) providing research opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students, especially women and members of underrepresented groups; (2) integrating knowledge of state-of-the-art research and recent technological advances into the developed new curricula to provide multidisciplinary training, and inspire interdisciplinary research ideas; (3) developing educational activities in helping K-12 students from underrepresented groups and K-12 teachers from schools with high minority student population and low socioeconomic status.