ECO-LITE

Funded by Research Council of Finland

ECO-LITE

synErgic and Context-aware prOtocols for energy-neutraL IoT dEvices

01.09.2024 - 31.08.2028

PI: Onel Alcaraz López (onel.alcarazlopez@oulu.fi)

ECO-LITE

There are billions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, i.e., things that can sense, communicate, and actuate, worldwide and the number will keep growing in the coming years. A significant share of the IoT landscape is increasingly dominated by ultra-constrained devices driven by applications such as: logistics, smart homes/agriculture, remote/smart healthcare, environmental monitoring, and ubiquitous sensing/localization, to name a few. Due to their massive number and targeted applications, such devices should be maintenance-free, self-sustained/sustainable, cheap, autonomous, and imperceptible. Devices exhibiting, to varying degrees, these characteristics and requirements have been termed energy-neutral, ambient IoT, or zero-energy. In general, they must be equipped with ultra-low power/cost processors and transceivers and harvest energy to avoid battery recharging plugins or replacement. Due to the above, and to their unique capability/performance heterogeneity, intrinsic fabrication, hardware (HW), deployment, and operation limitations, they remain partially/fully unsupported by modern IoT connectivity solutions, e.g., LTE-M, NB-IoT, BLE, LoRaWAN, WiFi-HaLow, SigFox, and ZigBee. Hereinafter, we refer to such a device category solely as energy-neutral devices (ENDs). Next, we highlight potential enabling technologies and related open research problems, and state the objectives of ECO-LITE.

Objectives

RO1: Characterization and Classification of ENDs:

We aim to develop a framework for characterizing and classifying ENDs based on their EH sources, operational environments, memory and computational resources, and materials selection. We aim to foster insight into the diverse ENDs landscape, tailored to various applications.

RO2: Advancement of Enabling Technologies for ENDs:

We aim to delve into and advance key END-enabling technologies, including EH methods, lightweight operation protocols, and TinyML integration according to the diverse END requirements and capabilities.

RO3. Incorporation of Context-awareness in Protocol Design:

We aim to incorporate context awareness into END sensing, actuation, communication, and computing, and propose corresponding protocols.

RO4. Holistic Integration:

We aim to synthesize the individual sensing, actuation, computing, and communication protocols into a unified system, ensuring their harmonious interaction.

RO5. Impact Assessment:

We aim to thoroughly assess the performance and impact of context awareness for END protocol design. We aim to rigorously test the feasibility, efficiency, and scalability of integrated context-aware END systems.

Technology Enablers