A wireless sensor network that employs passive radio wake-up of the sensor nodes can reduce the energy cost for unnecessary idle listening and communication overhead, extending the network lifetime. A passive wake-up radio is powered by the electromagnetic waves transmitted by a wake-up transmitter rather than a battery on the sensor node. However, this method of powering the wake-up radio results in a short wake-up range, which limits the performance of a passive wake-up radio sensor network. In this article, we describe our design of a passive wake-up radio sensor node-REACH2-Mote-using a high-efficiency, energy-harvesting module and a very low power wake-up circuit to achieve an extended wake-up range. We implemented REACH2-Mote in hardware and performed field tests to characterize its performance. The experimental results show that REACH2-Mote can achieve a wake-up range of 44 feet. We also modeled REACH2-Mote and evaluated its performance through simulations, comparing its performance to that of another passive wake-up radio approach, an active wake-up radio approach, and a conventional duty cycling approach. The simulation results show that REACH2-Mote can significantly extend the network lifetime while achieving high packet delivery rate and low latency.

Peer Reviewed