ELIXIR: An Expedient Connection Paradigm for Self-Powered IoT Devices

IoT devices usually work under power-constrained scenarios like outdoor environmental monitoring. Considering the cost and sustainability, in the long run, energy-harvesting technology is preferable for powering IoT devices. Since harvesting power is intrinsically weak and transient, the connection between IoT devices not only cannot be maintained constantly but is also extremely difficult to be established. In order to communicate, those devices should have a synchronized timeline so that both transmitter and receiver can start connection simultaneously. Yet due to the transient nature of ambient energy, volatile time data can be easily tampered with by the unstable power supply or corrupted completely by frequent power outages. As a result, unsynchronized IoT devices require significant efforts in time and energy to reconnect and communicate, which further escalates the performance degradation of the edge network. To adapt to ubiquitous self-powered scenarios on the IoT edge, we propose ELIXIR, an expedient connection paradigm, to synchronize swiftly and autonomously in a joint effort for self-powered IoT devices. The lightweight and highly efficient natures enable ELIXIR to be integrated into low-power IoT devices easily and efficiently. The experimental results show that the proposed ELIXIR can avoid a connection loop and help speed up the connection 2.83x and 1.84x faster than baseline methods.

Automated summary

IoT devices usually operate under power-constrained scenarios and energy-harvesting technology is preferred for powering these devices. However, the weak and transient nature of harvested power makes it difficult for IoT devices to maintain constant and stable connections. To address this issue, we propose ELIXIR, a method for swiftly and autonomously synchronizing self-powered IoT devices, which can greatly improve the connection speed.