Scalability of Network Capacity in Nanonetworks Powered by Energy Harvesting

This paper provides design guidelines in the feasibility and deployability of nanonetworks powered by energy harvesting techniques throughout bounding the per node throughput capacity as a function of the number of nodes. The main findings are that such bound coincides with the bound in power constrained networks when the sensors operate in their optimal conditions. However, when the sensors fail to efficiently convert the environmental energy to effectively communicate, the per node throughput capacity bound is then constrained by a very restrictive bound. These networks become non-resilient to node failure when the energy buffer of the sensor is very small, while they become non scalable if the nanosensor has been dimensioned to operate at higher power demands. To derive these bounds, a function referred as the energy path function has been defined to relate the average amount of ambient energy which is efficiently converted into energy for communications.