Energy-aware Operation Protocols

The intermittent and limited energy availability typical of low-complexity energy-harvesting (EH) IoT networks challenges how devices sense, compute, actuate, and communicate. To ensure robust and sustainable operation under such constraints, devices may adopt energy-aware operation strategies that dynamically adapt their behaviour based on real-time and/or predicted energy availability. This talk explores this research domain, emphasizing how energy and energy information (EI) must be treated as first-class resources for protocol and system design. We begin by motivating the need for EI acquisition, detailing where and how energy availability can be measured and discussing the role of energy forecasting. The associated costs and fidelity of acquisition/forecasting are assessed, as these directly impact the feasibility and responsiveness of energy-aware protocols in ultra-constrained systems. We then examine the functional workload of EH-IoT nodes, characterizing the tasks they perform in terms of energy cost, execution granularity, and timing flexibility. We argue that such profiling is essential for informed energy budgeting and scheduling. Building on this foundation, the talk delves into energy-aware protocol design principles, providing illustrative examples, and disclosing key challenges and potential research directions. As EH-IoT deployments scale and expand application horizons, the energy-aware operation principles and associated technologies we discuss and envision may become foundational elements of future autonomous and dependable IoT systems.