Energy savings using wake-up receivers - An analysis of optimal designs

With increasing number of wirelessly connected devices having limited energy resources, energy efficient solutions become more and more important. Many studies have addressed schemes where low-power wake-up receivers are used to improve energy efficiency in networks with low traffic intensity (per node) and demands on availability. One such scheme is the duty-cycled wake-up receiver medium access (DCW-MAC) scheme, for which we have detailed understanding of achievable energy savings. In this paper we combine these with recent bounds on the characteristics of optimal low-power receiver designs. What we find is that network energy savings are always achievable with optimally designed wake-up receivers. Moreover, potential network energy savings increase as wake-up receiver power consumption decreases, despite the associated degradation in performance. The lowest network energy consumption, for this type of network, is reached for wake-up receivers pushed to the limit of functioning.