Wireless Sensor Networks for Smart Homes: A Fuzzy-Based Solution for an Energy-Effective Duty Cycle

Abstract

This paper introduces a fuzzy-based method that, according to the ratio of Throughput to Workload and the battery level, manages the sleeping time of devices in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) for smart homes. The purpose of this work is a system that can be executed on off-the-shelf hardware and offers enhanced performance confronted with other approaches. The challenge here is to achieve a practical method that reaches the target while bypassing complex and computationally expensive solutions, which would diminish the possible applicability of the method in real scenarios. The retrieved results prove that the proposed approach outperforms other solutions, significantly prolonging the life of battery-powered wireless devices with also satisfactory values of the ratio Throughput to Workload. Besides, a proof-of-concept implementation on off-the-shelf devices confirms that the proposed method does not expect powerful hardware and can be surely implemented on a low-cost device.