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Review
. 2020 Nov 10;20(22):6420.
doi: 10.3390/s20226420.

Challenges in Resource-Constrained IoT Devices: Energy and Communication as Critical Success Factors for Future IoT Deployment

Felisberto Pereira  1   2 , Ricardo Correia  1   3   4 , Pedro Pinho  1   5 , Sérgio I Lopes  1   6 , Nuno Borges Carvalho  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Challenges in Resource-Constrained IoT Devices: Energy and Communication as Critical Success Factors for Future IoT Deployment

Felisberto Pereira et al. Sensors (Basel). .

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) has been developing to become a free exchange of useful information between multiple real-world devices. Already spread all over the world in the most varied forms and applications, IoT devices need to overcome a series of challenges to respond to the new requirements and demands. The main focus of this manuscript is to establish good practices for the design of IoT devices (i.e., smart devices) with a focus on two main design challenges: power and connectivity. It groups IoT devices in passive, semi-passive, and active, giving details on multiple research topics. Backscatter communication, Wireless Power Transfer (WPT), Energy Harvesting (EH), chipless devices, Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer (SWIPT), and Wake-Up Radio (WUR) are some examples of the technologies that will be explored in this work.

Keywords: Energy Harvesting (EH); Internet of Things (IoT); Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer (SWIPT); Wake-Up Radio (WUR); Wireless Power Transfer (WPT); Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN); backscatter communications; chipless devices.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
IoT technological challenges.
Figure 2
Figure 2
IoT characterization considering energy and communication.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Backscatter architectures. (a) Monostatic (b) Bistatic.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Modulation Schemes. (a) On-Off Keying. (b) Frequency Shift Keying. (c) Phase Shift Keying. (d) Quadrature Amplitude Modulation.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Backscatter systems without dedicated interrogators or readers. (a) Ambient backscatter (b) Proprietary reader.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Different rectifier topologies. (a) Series diode rectifier. (b) Shunt diode rectifier. (c) Shunt diode with λ/4 stub. (d) N-stage Dickson voltage multiplier.
Figure 7
Figure 7
State of the art in RF-DC converters, with different topologies, from 450 MHz to 94 GHz. Adapted from [44].
Figure 8
Figure 8
Most used energy sources for energy harvesting.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Schematic of a thermoelectric energy harvester applied to human body. Adapted from [74].
Figure 10
Figure 10
Schematic of a Time Domain Reflectometry system using Surface Acoustic Wave.
Figure 11
Figure 11
Classification of smart materials.
Figure 12
Figure 12
Encoding based on the phase modulation. Adapted from [105].
Figure 13
Figure 13
SWIPT—independent receiver architecture.
Figure 14
Figure 14
SWIPT—time switching architecture.
Figure 15
Figure 15
SWIPT—power splitting architecture.
Figure 16
Figure 16
SWIPT—antenna switching architecture.
Figure 17
Figure 17
WUR—passive architecture.
Figure 18
Figure 18
WUR—active architecture.
Figure 19
Figure 19
Data rate vs. Range—active radio communication technologies.
Figure 20
Figure 20
BLE Packet Structure-Payload = 16 bytes. Data from source [138].
Figure 21
Figure 21
LoRa Packet Structure-SF = 7, BW = 125 kHz, CRC = 0 and Payload = 16 bytes. Data from source [139].
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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