Empirical Modeling of a Solar-Powered Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Node for Time-Slotted Operation

Energy Harvesting Wireless Sensor Networks (EHWSNs) are gaining importance in smart homes, environmental monitoring, health care and transportation systems, since they enable much longer operation time as energy can be replenished through energy harvesting. This is unlike WSN nodes that use non-rechargeable batteries which need to be replaced once energy is depleted. However, the sporadic availability of ambient energy makes the design of networking protocols and predicting network performance very challenging. In this paper, the authors perform an empirical energy characterization of a time-slotted solar energy harvesting node with different system and environmental parameters.