DECONN: Combining Minimum and Neutral Energy Consumption Strategies in IoT Networks

In Low-Power Internet-of-Things (IoT), energy provisioning is often heterogeneous, meaning that nodes with rechargeable and non-rechargeable batteries coexist and collaborate to support data communication. Non-rechargeable nodes pose the requirement of minimum energy consumption for maximizing their network lifetime. Nodes powered by rechargeable batteries, in turn, must foster neutral energy consumption to avoid battery depletion and overflow. In this context, keeping one subset of nodes in neutral consumption and another subset in minimum consumption while maintaining proper network operation is a complex challenge to solve. To tackle this problem, we propose in this paper the Dual Energy COnsumption for interNet-of-thiNgs (DECONN). DECONN is a distributed solution designed to combine minimum and neutral consumption for IoT networks with heterogeneous energy provision. Using DECONN, nodes with the lowest amount of energy determine the energy consumption of the nodes located in the communication path. We compare DECONN with current IoT low-power standard protocols, such as RPL and CoAP. The results achieved provide evidence that DECONN may outperform standard protocols regarding the amount of saved energy for non-rechargeable and time in neutral operation for rechargeable nodes.