Abstract

Batteryless Internet of Things nodes have emerged as a practical solution for long-term deployments in remote and maintenance-constrained environments. Conventional microcontroller architectures have relied on stable power sources, which have limited their suitability for intermittent energy conditions. Energy harvesting technologies, such as solar and vibration sources, have enabled sustainable operation, yet architectural inefficiencies have reduced system reliability under fluctuating power availability. Existing microcontroller designs have lacked adaptive mechanisms to handle frequent power interruptions and variable harvested energy. This limitation has resulted in state loss, excessive restart overhead, and inefficient energy utilization. The absence of energy-awareness at the architectural level has constrained task continuity and overall system performance in batteryless IoT nodes. This work has proposed an energy-harvesting aware microcontroller architecture that has integrated dynamic power monitoring, non-volatile state retention, and adaptive task scheduling. A lightweight energy prediction module has guided execution decisions based on harvested energy trends. The proposed architecture has included checkpointing logic that has preserved critical execution states during power outages. A prototype implementation has evaluated the design under real-world intermittent power profiles using solar and RF energy sources. Experimental evaluation has demonstrated that the proposed architecture has improved task completion rate by 31% compared with conventional microcontrollers. Energy utilization efficiency has increased by 27%, while restart overhead has reduced significantly. The system has maintained functional correctness under frequent power interruptions, which has validated the effectiveness of architectural energy-awareness. These results have confirmed that integrating energy-harvesting intelligence at the microcontroller level has enhanced reliability and sustainability for batteryless IoT nodes.

Authors

S.K. Rajesh¹, Mary P. Varghese², P. Rajkumar³, A.S. Shaseena⁴, Anju Aravind⁵
Vidya Academy of Science and Technology, India^1,2, Karpagam Academy of Higher Education, India³, Malabar College of Engineering and Technology, India⁴, Albertian Institute of Science and Technology, India⁵

Keywords

Energy Harvesting, Batteryless IoT, Microcontroller Architecture, Intermittent Power, Sustainable Computing