Title: Hardware filtering of non-intended frames for energy optimisation in wireless sensor networks

Authors: Emanuele Lattanzi; Alessandro Bogliolo

Addresses: Department of Basic Sciences and Foundations, University of Urbino, 61029 Urbino, Italy ' Department of Basic Sciences and Foundations, University of Urbino, 61029 Urbino, Italy

Abstract: Communication is responsible for the majority of energy consumption in typical wireless sensor networks (WSNs). While transmission energy can be controlled at each node, reception energy is outside the control of the nodes because they usually do not know the arrival time of their packets and they cannot avoid overhearing packets directed to the other nodes in range. Energy-aware MAC protocols apply duty-cycling which keeps the radio module off for most of the time and wakes it up periodically, but they suffer from overhearing which has been addressed so far either by means of preambles or by means of separate wake-up channels. This paper proposes a complementary approach which exploits the hardware frame filtering capabilities provided by state-of-the-art radio transceivers. Extensive experiments performed on VirtualSense motes show that hardware frame filtering saves more than 50% of the energy spent in the reception of non-intended packets.

Keywords: energy reduction; WSNs; wireless sensor networks; overhearing; frame filtering; hardware filtering; non-intended frames; energy optimisation; radio transceivers; energy efficiency.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSNET.2014.060725

International Journal of Sensor Networks, 2014 Vol.15 No.2, pp.121 - 129

Received: 11 Nov 2012
Accepted: 19 Sep 2013
Published online: 27 Apr 2014 *

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