Feasibility of Energy Management Techniques for Ultra-low Power M2M SatCom Terminals

Abstract

The request for the provision of services relying on Machine to Machine (M2M) communications have increased a lot over the last years. This has led to the introduction of M2M communications also in the SatCom area. In this context, the design of ultra-low power terminals becomes indispensable. In this paper, a feasibility study for assessing the implementation of an innovative energy efficient technique for ultra-low power M2M SatCom terminals is proposed. By Ieveraging on the E-SSA (Enhanced Spread Spectrum ALOHA) protocol, the newly proposed technique jointly exploits the use of multiple Spreading Factors (SFs) for transmission together with a smart transmission manager which is able optimize the use of energy harvesting by dynamically deciding when and how to transmit data. The proposed solution has been tested in different SatCom scenarios, demonstrating its effectiveness in terms of overall throughput and energy consumption.