Novel Energy Consumption Model for Simulating Wireless Sensor Networks

The simulation is nowadays one of the most widespread instruments for analyzing the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Unfortunately, the most widespread WSN simulators today have only the basic model for the battery, which does not account many of the important real-life hardware dependences. Therefore in the paper we are suggesting a novel approach to modeling the energy consumption for battery-powered WSN nodes. The suggested approach is based on the utilization of three dependences: the effect of battery charge on battery voltage; the effect of the supply voltage on the consumed by the WSN node current and the effect of the WSN node current on the available battery energy. The paper includes the description of the suggested module and its implementation in MiXiM framework for the OMNeT++ network simulator. Comparison of the results for real-life experiments, simulations using the standard approach and simulations utilizing the suggested approach are given. As revealed by the presented results, the suggested approach can significantly increase the simulation precision and provides additional functionality that can be valuable for WSN simulation.