Title: Improving sensor network performance with wireless energy transfer

Authors: Constantinos Marios Angelopoulos; Sotiris Nikoletseas; Theofanis P. Raptis; Christoforos Raptopoulos; Filippos Vasilakis

Addresses: Centre Universitaire d'Informatique, Université de Genève, 1227 Carouge, Geneva, Switzerland ' Computer Technology Institute and Press 'Diophantus' (CTI) & Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics, University of Patras, 26500 Patras, Greece ' Computer Technology Institute and Press 'Diophantus' (CTI) & Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics, University of Patras, 26500 Patras, Greece ' Computer Technology Institute and Press 'Diophantus' (CTI) & Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics, University of Patras, 26500 Patras, Greece ' School of Electrical Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), 10044 Stockholm, Sweden

Abstract: Through recent technology advances in the field of wireless energy transmission wireless rechargeable sensor networks have emerged. In this new paradigm for wireless sensor networks a mobile entity called mobile charger (MC) traverses the network and replenishes the dissipated energy of sensors. In this work we first provide a formal definition of the charging dispatch decision problem and prove its computational hardness. We then investigate how to optimise the trade-offs of several critical aspects of the charging process. In the light of these optimisations, we study the impact of the charging process to the network lifetime for three characteristic underlying routing protocols. Finally, we propose a mobile charging protocol that locally adapts the circular trajectory of the MC to the energy dissipation rate of each sub-region of the network. We compare this protocol against several MC trajectories by a detailed experimental evaluation. The derived findings demonstrate significant performance gains.

Keywords: wireless sensor networks; WSNs; energy efficiency; wireless charging; wireless energy transfer; mobility; distributed algorithms; experimentation; performance; mobile charging protocol; routing protocols; network lifetime; charging dispatch; optimisation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAHUC.2015.073169

International Journal of Ad Hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, 2015 Vol.20 No.3, pp.159 - 171

Received: 24 Jan 2014
Accepted: 19 Jun 2014
Published online: 26 Nov 2015 *

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