Power-On Controller for high lifetime wireless sensor nodes

Power savings are nowadays crucial in embedded system contexts such as Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) in order to increase the lifetime of sensor nodes. In this paper, we propose a new hardware structure called “Power-On Controller” (POC) for applying advanced control strategies for the “idle to active” node state transition. The proposed POC allows an optimization of power control by using event accumulation and spatial selectivity mechanisms. These new features allow to reduce the dynamic power consumption of roughly 60% compared to state-of-the-art power management solutions for a typical WSN applicative context, without altering the quality of service. The POC structure can be easily integrated in any sensor node based on system-on-chip design.