Estimating Battery Life in TDMA Mesh-based Wireless Sensor Networks, for Merged Data Collection Method

Abstract

This paper provides a comprehensive description of battery life estimation and energy consumption in TDMA wireless mesh sensor networks. Specifically, we focus on the merged data collecting (MDC) method that utilizes lithium thionyl chloride batteries. We present detailed timing, energy consumption, and battery life estimation results of the MDC method in TDMA mesh sensor networks that use flooding routing. Our battery life estimation is based on actual energy consumption measurements, of the sensor nodes during various communication phases, using a realistic battery model. We also determine low-level constraints based on energy consumption measurements during different operational phases. To demonstrate the applicability of our model, we applied it to a test sensor network designed for temperature monitoring.