Analytic comparison of wake-up receivers for WSNs and benefits over the wake-on radio scheme

Since in most wireless sensor network (WSN) scenarios nodes must operate autonomously for months or years, power management of the radio (usually consuming the largest amount of node's energy) is crucial. In particular, reducing the power consumption during listening plays a fundamental role in the whole energy balance of a sensor node, since shutting down the receiver when no messages are expected can remarkably increase the autonomy. Idle listening is a hard challenge because incoming messages are often unpredictable and developers have to trade off low power consumption and high quality of service. This paper is focusing on benefits of introducing a wake-up receiver over simple duty-cycling (wake-on radio). We analyze and compare the existing wake-up receiver prototypes and explore their benefits using simulations of two typical scenarios: with and without addressing requirements. A particular approach outperforms other solutions in terms of lifetime extension because of its very low power consumption (1W). We also evaluate the overhead of the addressing capability, which sometimes has a non-negligible impact on the performance.