Pible: Battery-Free Mote for Perpetual Indoor BLE Applications

Abstract: Smart building applications require a large-scale deployment of sensors distributed across the environment. Recent innovations in smart environments are driven by wireless networked sensors as they are easy to deploy. However, replacing these batteries at scale is a non-trivial, labor-intensive task. Energy harvesting has emerged as a potential solution to avoid battery replacement but requires compromises such as application specific design, simplified communication protocol or reduced quality of service. We explore the design space of battery-free sensor nodes using commercial off the shelf components, and present Pible: a Perpetual Indoor BLE sensor node that leverages ambient light and can support numerous smart building applications. We analyze node-lifetime, quality of service and light availability trade-offs and present a predictive algorithm that adapts to changing lighting conditions to maximize node lifetime and application quality of service. Using a 20 node, 15-day deployment in a real building under varying lighting conditions, we show feasible applications that can be implemented using Pible and the boundary conditions under which they can fail.