Enhanced power management in adaptive communication for IoT-based environmental monitoring

Adaptive network communication architectures (ANCAs) for Internet of Things (IoT) environmental monitoring face significant challenges arising from intermittent connectivity, limited energy availability, and hardware-level power instability in rural and resource-constrained environments. Although existing adaptive communication frameworks improve network utilization through protocol selection, they frequently assume ideal power conditions and overlook transient current surges that compromise system reliability during field deployment. This article presents the design, implementation, and experimental evaluation of a multi-radio ANCA integrating Wi-Fi, LoRa, and the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) under a unified energy-aware adaptive switching controller. The proposed architecture combines hardware-level power conditioning, including low-equivalent series resistance (ESR) bulk capacitance and efficient DC–DC regulation, with a quality-of-service (QoS)-driven adaptive communication algorithm that dynamically selects the most appropriate radio based on latency, throughput, packet loss, received signal strength indicator (RSSI), and predicted energy cost. The system was evaluated through a 6-month field deployment involving four IoT monitoring nodes operating under semi-controlled rural conditions. A representative statistical dataset comprising 5,000 observations per communication technology, randomly sampled from more than 518,400 telemetry transmissions, was used for comparative performance analysis. Results demonstrate that the proposed architecture achieved a median communication latency of 120 ms (95% confidence interval: 112–128 ms), packet loss of 2.0% ± 0.8%, throughput sufficient for heterogeneous environmental data streams, and system availability exceeding 95% under solar-battery operation. Hardware-level surge mitigation eliminated GSM-induced voltage drops and modem resets, significantly improving communication reliability during cellular network registration. A comparative cost–benefit analysis further showed that although integrated ANCA deployments incur higher initial capital expenditure, they substantially reduce long-term operational costs through lower maintenance requirements, fewer site visits, and improved system uptime. The proposed architecture provides a reproducible and practically validated framework for resilient, energy-aware IoT environmental monitoring systems suitable for deployment in underserved and off-grid regions.