NeTS: Small: Designing Sustainable Battery-Free Multi-Hop Sensing Networks

普遍的、长期的和大规模的传感的前景刺激了许多新的应用。尽管经过了十多年的研究，但许多此类应用的前景仍然受到设备电源限制的阻碍。为了为构建这些应用程序提供具有竞争力的可持续解决方案，该项目在传感和网络范式方面进行了彻底的转变。它提出了建立无电池传感网络（BFSN），利用周围的能量来支持其操作。通过消除对电池的需求，它将支持可持续运行，特别是在危险条件下。基本的新奇是建立一个混合架构（由三层组成：无电池设备，电池供电的设备，和基站），使无电池的多跳网络与低功耗，非常有限的计算和存储在无电池设备。这项研究有可能彻底改变传感器和网络物理系统的通信架构，降低成本，简化管理。实现BFSN优势的许多关键挑战将集中在小型无电池设备上，例如为这些设备充电，放置设备和充电站，将这些设备与更广泛的网络联网，并定位它们。首先，研究人员研究智能能源收集和充电。他们建议仔细部署和调度无线充电站，以补偿不稳定和不可靠的环境能源，并提供可持续的网络服务。其次，研究人员研究了无电池网络和通信。为了实现多个设备的联网，它们提供了一个完整的网络堆栈，由物理层协议、链路层协议和网络层协议组成。数据收集协议是为了在延迟、能效和网络可靠性之间进行权衡而提出的。第三，研究人员研究了无电池定位和跟踪。 他们的目标是将无电池设备分为不同的类别，并提出不同的算法来定位它们，同时成功解决无电池设备有限的计算和能源供应问题。

The promise of pervasive, long-term, and large scale sensing has spurred many new applications. In spite of more than a decade of research, the promise of many such applications is still hindered by the limitation of power supply to devices. To provide a competitive sustainable solution for building these applications, this project takes a radical shift in the sensing and networking paradigm. It proposes to build battery-free sensing network (BFSN) by exploiting the ambient energy to support its operation. By removing the need for battery, it will support a sustainable operation, especially in hazard conditions. The underlying novelty is the establishment of a hybrid architecture (composed of three layers: battery-free devices, battery-powered devices, and base-stations) to enable the battery-free multi-hop networking with the low-power supply, extremely limited computation and storage in battery-free devices. The proposed research has the potential to revolutionize the communication architecture for sensor and cyber-physical systems, lowering their cost and easing their management.Many key challenges in realizing the benefits of BFSN will focus on the small-sized battery-free devices, such as charging these devices, placement of devices and charging stations, networking these devices and the wider network, and locating them. First, the researchers study Smart Energy Harvesting and Charging. They propose to carefully deploy and schedule the wireless charging stations to compensate the unstable and unreliable environmental energy, and provide sustainable network services. Secondly, the researchers study Battery-free Networking and Communication. To enable networking of multiple devices, they present a complete network stack, composed of the physical layer protocols, the link layer protocols, and network layer protocols. Data collection protocols are proposed for trade-offs among latency, energy-efficiency, and network reliability. Thirdly, the researchers study Battery-free Locating and Tracking. They aim to divide battery-free devices into different categories and propose different algorithms to locate them with good accuracy while successfully addressing the limited computation and energy supply of batter-free devices.