A Platform for Experiments with Energy Storage Devices for Low-power Wireless Networks

We present a hardware platform for performing experimental studies of energy storage devices for low power wireless networks. It is based on a low-cost custom card that can apply fine-grain synthetic loads - both charge and discharge - to a set of batteries or capacitors and measure their response in detail. Loads can be defined from a "live" trace of a running wireless device, from a recorded trace, or programmatically via a script. This approach makes it practical to run well controlled, large scale, long running experiments and to obtain high precision and accuracy. We describe two proof-of-concept experiments using rechargeable Li coin cells and capacitors to demonstrate the capabilities of our platform.