Abstract
Energy harvesting batteryless wireless sensors survive in harsh environments with a minimal energy budget. Indeed, the ambient harvested energy may be sporadic and not constant. Thus, devices operate intermittently experiencing frequent power failures. Communication over these devices must guarantee efficiency and avoid loss of energy. TRAP (TRAnsiently-powered Protocol) can be a solution to avoid packet loss due to receivers’ power failure. TRAP guarantees communication between devices thanks to the node’s energy status awareness. Indeed, effective communication succeeds only if both sides of the communication channel involved in the data packet exchange process have enough energy to complete transmission and reception. TRAP relies on nodes’ energy level information provided through an RF backscatter channel implemented as a self-sustainable and ultra-low-power demanding process. A possible TRAP implementation with RF backscatter has been proven in a laboratory setup for a few devices network. Although results were promising, deep validation and scale-up are necessary. For this purpose, we developed a simulator to verify how the protocol works in different conditions and how performance scales in large sensor networks. The simulation results show that the TRAP protocol reduces waste of energy avoiding failed transmissions due to power failures and increasing communication performance.