Software-Defined Metamaterials (SDMs) are envisioned to enable the control of electromagnetic waves at an unprecedented scale. Various SDM applications will require downlink and broadcast-based transmission of control packets from a powered transmitter to energy harvesting nanonodes. The nanonode’s communication system is anticipated to be a bottleneck for such nanonetworks, hence an accurate modeling of its energy consumption is needed. Time-Spread ON-OFF Keying (TS-OOK) is a prevailing scheme for nanocommunication in the Terahertz (THz) frequencies, with short pulses representing logical “1”s and silences “0”s. In the energy modeling of this scheme, a certain energy is usually attributed to the transmission or reception of the pulses, without considering the energy consumed in idling. To enable more realistic modeling, we propose an energy consumption model that additionally accounts for the idling energy. In a scenario relevant for numerous SDM applications, we demonstrate that the idling energy consumption is substantial and cannot be disregarded. To reduce the idling energy consumption, we propose a new duty cycle for the receiving nanonodes. Assuming frequent packet repetitions on the transmit side, the proposed duty cycle utilizes short wake-ups of the receiving nanonodes. Additionally, we propose two algorithms for deciding when these wake-ups should be performed. For two energy harvesting options expected to be utilized in prominent SDM applications, we show that, in case the proposed duty cycle is utilized, three orders of magnitude higher idling energy consumption can be tolerated compared to the baseline. Finally, we demonstrate encouraging performance of the proposed algorithms in increasing the communication reliability.

中文翻译：

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用于控制软件定义超材料的能量收集太赫兹纳米网络中的空闲能量建模和减少

软件定义的超材料 (SDM) 旨在以前所未有的规模控制电磁波。各种 SDM 应用将需要从供电发射器到能量收集纳米节点的控制数据包的下行链路和基于广播的传输。预计纳米节点的通信系统将成为此类纳米网络的瓶颈，因此需要对其能耗进行准确建模。时间扩展开关键控 (TS-OOK) 是用于太赫兹 (THz) 频率的纳米通信的流行方案，短脉冲代表逻辑“1”和静音“0”。在该方案的能量建模中，通常将一定的能量归因于脉冲的发送或接收，而没有考虑空闲时消耗的能量。为了实现更逼真的建模，我们提出了一个额外考虑空转能量的能耗模型。在与众多 SDM 应用相关的场景中，我们证明了空闲能耗是巨大的，不能被忽视。为了减少空闲能耗，我们为接收纳米节点提出了一个新的占空比。假设在发送端频繁重复数据包，建议的占空比利用接收纳米节点的短唤醒。此外，我们提出了两种算法来决定何时应该执行这些唤醒。对于预计将在突出的 SDM 应用中使用的两种能量收集选项，我们表明，在使用建议的占空比的情况下，与基线相比，可以容忍高三个数量级的空闲能耗。最后，