Lifetime Prediction for Supercapacitor-Powered Wireless Sensor Nodes

Energy-aware task scheduling is a novel research direction for wireless sensor networks. It depends on accurate models for lifetime prediction. In other terms, nodes must be aware of present and future energy resources. This paper addresses the first step towards reaching this goal: it explores discharging-characteristics of supercapacitors, discusses analytical discharging-models for lifetime prediction, and evaluates these models by comparing them with real discharging curves. In the recent past, energy-efficiency has become a major research topic in the field of wireless sensor networks. Though it can prolong a sensor node's lifetime, energy depletion will eventually emerge long before the desired date.