An energy consumption model for IEEE 802.11ah WLANs

One of the main challenges when designing a new self-powered wireless sensor network (WSN) technology is the vast operational dependence on its scarce energy resources. Therefore, a thorough identification and characterisation of the main energy consumption processes may lay the foundation for developing further mechanisms aimed to make a more efficient use of devices’ batteries. This paper provides an energy consumption model for IEEE 802.11ah WLANs operating in power saving mode, which are expected to become one of the technology drivers in the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) in the next years. Given the network characteristics, the presented analytical model is able to provide an estimation of the average energy consumed by a station as well as to predict its battery lifetime. Once the model has been validated, we use it to obtain the optimal IEEE 802.11ah power saving parameters in several IoT key scenarios, validating that the parameters provided by the IEEE 802.11ah Task Group are already a very good choice.