Estimation of the carbon footprint of IoT devices based on ESP8266 microcontrollers

Abstract

The development of the Internet of Things contributes to improving network protocols and increasing the requirements for energy efficiency of devices. In the field of the Internet of Things and automation systems, one of the most popular microcontrollers is the ESP8266. This article discusses the leading Internet of Things connection protocols based on ESP8266, such as ESP-NOW, HTTP, and ESP-MESH. The study of the power consumption of this microcontroller in various situations and describes the optimal applications of IoT based on ESP8266. The correct choice of communication means of the ESP8266 microcontroller allows you to reduce its power consumption by more than 10% relative to energyintensive communication algorithms. Compared to the power-intensive MESH network, the reduction in power consumption when using the HTTP protocol is 3.34%, and the percentage of energy-consuming events drops by 50.85%. When using ESP-NOW, energy efficiency increases by 5.35%, and the number of energy-consuming events decreases by 83.05%. The value of the carbon footprint generated by the device during the year was, for the three communication technologies used, 2 kg 500 g, 2 kg 320 g, and 2 kg 290 g of CO2, respectively.