Energy-Efficient Communications for Improving Timely Progress of Intermittent-Powered BLE Devices

Abstract

Battery-less devices offer potential solutions for maintaining sustainable Internet of Things (IoT) networks. However, limited energy harvesting capacity can lead to power failures, limiting the system’s quality of service (QoS) . To improve timely task progress, we present ETIME, a scheduling framework that enables energy-efficient communication for intermittent-powered IoT devices. To maximize energy efficiency while meeting the timely requirements of intermittent systems, we first model the relationship between insufficient harvesting energy and task behavior time. We then propose a method for predicting response times for battery-less devices. Considering both delays from multiple task interference and insufficient system energy, we introduce a dynamic wake-up strategy to improve timely task progress. Additionally, to minimize power consumption from connection components, we propose a dynamic connection interval adjustment to provide energy-efficient communication. The proposed algorithms are implemented in a lightweight operating system on real devices. Experimental results show that our approach can significantly improve progress for timely applications while maintaining task progress.