Industrial wireless sensor networks enable real-time data collection, analysis, and control by interconnecting diverse industrial devices. In these industrial settings, power outlets are not always available, and reliance on battery power can be impractical due to the need for frequent battery replacement or stringent safety regulations. Battery-less energy harvesters present a suitable alternative for powering these devices. However, these energy harvesters, equipped with supercapacitors instead of batteries, suffer from intermittent on-off behavior due to their limited energy storage capacity. As a result, they struggle with extended or frequent energy-consuming phases of multi-hop network formation, such as network joining and synchronization. To address these challenges, our work proposes three strategies for integrating battery-less energy harvesting devices into industrial multi-hop wireless sensor networks. In contrast to other works, our work prioritizes the mitigation of intermittency-related issues, rather than focusing solely on average energy consumption, as is typically the case with battery-powered devices. For each of the proposed strategies, we provide an in-depth discussion of their suitability based on several critical factors, including the type of energy source, storage capacity, device mobility, latency, and reliability.

翻译：工业无线传感器网络通过互联各类工业设备，实现实时数据采集、分析与控制。然而在工业场景中，电源插座并非随处可见，且因需要频繁更换电池或受严格安全法规限制，依赖电池供电往往不可行。无电池能量采集器为设备供电提供了理想替代方案，但这类配备超级电容器（而非电池）的能量采集器，由于储能容量有限，会呈现间歇性通断行为，导致其在多跳组网（如入网与同步）这类持续时间长或频率高的能量消耗阶段面临挑战。针对上述问题，本文提出三种将无电池能量采集设备集成至工业多跳无线传感器网络的策略。与现有研究不同，本文优先解决间歇性相关问题，而非像通常处理电池供电设备那样仅关注平均能耗。针对每种策略，我们基于能量源类型、存储容量、设备移动性、延迟及可靠性等关键因素，深入讨论了其适用性。