Zolertia Z1 energy usage simulation with Cooja simulator

Energy consumption in the embedded devices plays an essential role towards the performance of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). Routing protocol, network topology, to the number of sensors in the network are things that highly affect the energy consumption. The research indirectly on the use of energy in WSN is quite complex for involving more hardware, software and other parameters that highly rely on the research environment involved in it. A simulator can be used as the alternative in simplifying the research environment. In this research, Cooja simulator was used to simulate the use of energy in WSN. This simulator can run the ContikiOS in a native manner in which ContikiOS is commonly used by the WSN hardware platform. Hence, the use of Cooja simulator can simplify the research environment required to obtain the expected results. The use of energy was measured based upon two scenarios: network topology and transmission ratio (Tx and Rx) from the node sensors. The parameters used to measure the use of energy included CPU Power, LPM Power, Listening Power, and Transmit Power. The result of the test showed no any significant difference in the energy usage among the different network topologies, but the significant difference of the energy usage was obtained from the difference of the transmission ratio (Tx and Rx) sensor node.