Reliable low-power wireless networks over unstable transmission power

Internet of Things promises large scale interconnected sensing and actuation capabilities in domains, areas, applications and activities never accessed before by Internet. Besides other technical barriers, wireless network node lifetime impedes its applicability. To reduce the energy cost incurred by wireless communication, several existing mechanisms typically downscale the power of transmitters. However, this increases the instability of the link and aggravates the hidden-node terminal and energy-hole problems. In this work, we assess the effect of transmission power on the performance of a low-power wireless network. Both MAC and routing signaling are taken into account to estimate a more realistic impact of power scaling in the energy efficiency of a network. Our experiments in various settings demonstrate a high cost of low transmission power in terms of both duty cycle and collisions. Symmetrically, high transmission power ensures higher PDR and energy efficiency in a network with multiple source nodes and CCA enabled.