Internet of energy harvesting cognitive radios

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) offers enhanced connectivity so that any system, being, or process can be reached from anywhere at any time by perpetual surveillance, which results in very large and complex data sets, i.e., Big Data. Despite numerous advantages, IoT technology comes with some unavoidable drawbacks. Considering the number of devices to be added to the current electromagnetic spectrum, it is a fact that wireless communications will severely suffer and eventually become inoperable. Furthermore, as wireless devices are equipped with limited capacity batteries, frequent replenishments and/or maintenance will be needed. However, this is neither practical nor achievable due to the excessive number of devices envisioned by the IoT paradigm. Here, the unification of Energy Harvesting (EH) and Cognitive Radio (CR) stands highly promising to alleviate the current drawbacks, enabling more efficient data generation, acquisition, and analysis. This chapter outlines a new vision, namely Internet of Energy Harvesting Cognitive Radios (IoEH-CRs), to take the IoT-enabled Big Data paradigm a step further. It discusses the basics of the EH-assisted spectrum-aware communications and their implications for the IoT, as well as the challenges posed by the unification of these techniques. An operational framework together with node and network architectures is also presented.