Performance Analysis of Solar Powered Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless sensor network (WSN) is one of the important systems in remote operations that are necessary in defence and industrial applications. Powering these systems is critical in the monitoring and control of the systems. Normally these systems often operate off-grid. Solar power is one of the clean and abundant energy that can be harvested to power WSN nodes. Hence it can be used to power the system under hostile environment also. Therefore, the defence and industrial WSN systems can be powered using Solar Photovoltaic Module (PM) along with a suitable converter. This paper explores the working of Solar Powered WSN nodes, that uses Non-Inverting Buck Boost Converter (NIBBC). The proposed model is developed and simulated in MATLAB Simulink for Indian climatic conditions. The output power of the PM along with NIBBC connected is found to supply power with 93.27% efficiency to its load (WSN node) at its Maximum Power Point (MPP).