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 man- agement 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 unpre- dictable and developers have to trade o low power con- sumption and high quality of service. This paper is focusing on benets 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 ben- ets 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.