Practical analysis of energy consumption optimization methods in IoT

Applications of IoT systems expanding day by day. Smart cities, smart agriculture, and smart homes represent some of the prominent application areas for IoT systems. Within these systems, minimizing energy consumption presents a significant challenge. This is especially critical in scenarios where devices rely on limited battery resources or absence of a grid connection, such as in smart agriculture, wildlife monitoring or remote smart city applications. In these cases, reducing energy consumption directly translates to extended operational lifetimes. Furthermore, a decrease in energy consumption within IoT systems offers additional benefits, including reduced maintenance costs and a diminished carbon footprint. This study aims to provide a practical analysis of methods designed to optimize energy consumption in IoT systems with constrained battery resources. In conducting these practical analyses, a deliberate focus has been placed on commonly utilized and cost-effective solutions. In this thesis; we conducted practical analysis to improve IoT systems energy efficiency. In order to this, we conducted practical test in MQTT message publishing scenario using ESP32 microcontroller via Wi-Fi. The methods tested include: wireless communication distance, wireless communication transmission power, amount of data transmitted, data transmission period, quality of service levels, and the use of sleep modes. Among the results; it is seen that reducing the wireless communication distance can reduce the energy consumption of the IoT system by up to 50%. In addition, changing the wireless transmission power when connection is stable offers the potential to reduce energy consumption by up to 5.2%. On the ESP32 microcontroller, extending the data transmission period from 30 seconds to 1 minute while the modem is in sleep mode reduces energy consumption by 20.8%. Furthermore, utilizing the modem sleep mode results in a 9.3% lower energy consumption compared to not using it, specifically when data is sent at 30-second intervals. It was also observed that if the IoT system fails to establish a connection with the wireless modem, its energy consumption approximately doubles.