Abstract
Powering wireless sensors with energy harvested from the environment is coming of age due to the increasing power densities of both storage and harvesting devices and the electronics performing energy efficient energy conversion. In order to maximize the functionality of the wireless sensor network, minimize missing packets, minimize latency and prevent the waste of energy, problems like congestion and inefficient energy usage must be addressed. Many sleep-awake protocols and efficient message priority techniques have been developed to properly manage the energy of the nodes and to minimize congestion. For a WSN that is operating in a strictly energy constrained environment, an energy-efficient transmission strategy is necessary. In this paper, we present a novel transmission priority decision scheme for a heterogeneous body sensor network composed of normal nodes and an energy harvesting node that acts as a cluster head. The energy harvesting node's decision whether or not to clear a normal node for sending is based on a set of metrics which includes the energy harvesting node's remaining energy, the total harvested energy, the type of message in a normal node's queue and finally, the implementation context of the wireless sensor network.