Energy-Aware, Energy-Harvesting Node Demonstration

To demonstrate the energy-aware, energy-harvesting node that has been described here, it has been used with supporting hardware to facilitate data flow and also to provide energy sources for the energy harvesters to utilize.

8.6.1 Supporting Nodes for Demonstration

In the demonstration previously outlined, the energy-harvesting node communi­cates with two remote nodes and a sink node. The remote nodes consist of CC2430 nodes powered by batteries. The nodes have a control allowing the user to set the message priority (MP) of the readings that it makes from the attached sensor module when a measurement is requested. This control was implemented so that by varying the MP the intelligent routing aspects of the energy-aware node can be demonstrated. The remote nodes are programmed so that they can only commu­nicate directly with the energy-harvesting node and must relay their results to the sink node via it. The sink node consists of a CC2430-based node connected to a PC using a USB connection, which is also used to provide the power to the node. The node is programmed to only receive messages from the energy-harvesting node. On receiving a message, it is decoded and then a text string is displayed on a terminal window on the PC to show the content of the message received.