Speed-Grading Mobile Charging Policy in Large-Scale Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks

In recent times, wireless energy transfer has become an effective solution to charge devices due to its efficiency and reliability. In a typical Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks (WRSN), wireless energy transfer technique can solve the energy depletion problem with the aid of a Wireless Charging Vehicle (WCV), thereby enabling the network to extend its lifetime. However, sensor nodes in a WRSN still have their energies depleted before it gets replenished by the WCV. In this paper, we proposed a scheme that prioritizes sensor nodes for charging and also developed efficient algorithms to improve on existing charging schemes so as to extend the lifetime of the WRSN. Firstly, an inspection algorithm was developed to visit and inspect sensor nodes in the network so as to determine the sensor nodes to charge. Secondly, a greedy charge algorithm was introduced to ascertain the shortest distance the WCV needs to travel and, lastly, an energy for nodes’ algorithm was proposed to determine the stopping point and when the WCV needs to return to the base station. Simulation experiments were also conducted to determine the performance of our scheme. The simulation experiments revealed that our proposed scheme made significant improvements when compared to other schemes in literature using several metrics.

Recent breakthrough in the wireless energy transfer have attracted attention of the researchers due to its potential to prolong the lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and to eliminate energy bottlenecks. Through wireless charging vehicles sensor node's energy can be replenished periodically by using Wireless Charging Vehicles (WCVs). However, for a large scale WSN, the capacity of WCVs, positioning and coordination between them, and limited resources of WCVs have to be considered to implement a scalable charging system. Additionally, creating an efficient charging route for the WCVs considering the dynamic energy consumption of sensor nodes is also crucial. Since, WCVs have limited capacity and low system resources, the classic TSP-based Optimization algorithms, which requires high-performance computing, are not suitable for them. In this paper, we proposed GHSC (Guided Hilbert for Specified Cluster), which is based on the Hilbert space filling curve. We consider a clustered WSN with multiple WCVs, where each cluster is assigned to a single WCV. GHSC creates a primary charging route by considering a cluster as an unit square and dividing the square into small sub-squares. As the Hilbert curve goes through each sub-squares, the algorithm assigns a rank for each of them based on their position along the curve. The algorithm then map the nodes into vertices of the sub-squares and rank the nodes as well. Once ranking is done, the algorithm creates a charging route based on the node's ranking. This heuristic approach of the GHSC algorithm can find effective charging tours for the WCVs with a time complexity of (O(n log n) + Ω(nk)). Compared to other Global Optimization algorithms, GHSC was able to find tours, which was at most a logarithmic factor longer than the shortest tour.

Wireless rechargeable sensor networks (WRSNs) have emerged as a critical infrastructure for monitoring and collecting data in large-scale and dynamic environments. The energy autonomy of sensor nodes is crucial for the sustained operation of WRSNs. This paper presents a comprehensive survey on the state-of-the-art approaches and technologies in on-demand energy provisioning in large-scale WRSNs. We explore various energy harvesting techniques, storage solutions, and energy management strategies tailored to the unique challenges posed by the dynamic and resource-constrained nature of WRSNs. This survey categorizes existing literature based on energy harvesting sources, including solar, kinetic, and ambient energy, and discusses advancements in energy storage technologies such as supercapacitors and rechargeable batteries. Furthermore, we investigate energy management techniques that adaptively balance energy consumption and harvesting, optimizing the overall network performance. In addition to providing a thorough overview of existing solutions, this paper identifies opportunities and challenges in the field of on-demand energy provisioning for large-scale WRSNs. By synthesizing current research efforts, this survey aims to provide insight to researchers and policymakers in understanding the landscape of on-demand energy provisioning in large-scale WRSNs. The insights gained from this study pave the way for future innovations and contribute to the development of sustainable and self-sufficient wireless sensor networks, critical for the advancement of applications such as environmental monitoring, precision agriculture, and smart cities.

With the advancement in the technology of wireless energy transfer based on magnetic resonant coupling, multiple nodes can be charged simultaneously. In this paper, we utilize this new breakthrough to transfer energy to sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks. We carry on the cellular structure in [4] to describe a wireless sensor network (WSN) and employ a wireless charging vehicle (WCV) periodically visiting each cell to charge nodes within it wirelessly. We propose a dynamic optimization model which is practical and feasible to forecast the departure time and charging time in each cell of the WCV. With the target of maximizing the time during which WCV stays at the service station, we develop two constraints as sufficient and necessary conditions to satisfy the energy requirement at each node and present through simulation how to schedule the WCV to accomplish its energy transfer tasks in a real-time WSN.

SummaryCharging path planning in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) refers to designing an efficient charging path for sensor nodes in the network. However, most charging schemes mainly consider the planning of charging paths and pay little attention to the impact of uncertainties, such as road conditions and environment on the planning of charging paths, as well as ignoring the charging problem of new nodes in need of charging. Road conditions and the environment directly affect the energy consumption of wireless charging vehicles (WCVs) during traveling. To address the aforementioned challenges, this article proposes an interval many‐objective charging path scheme model, the WCV consumption is an uncertain value, it will change according to the environment, and road conditions, so we represent it as an interval parameter with upper and lower bounds. An interval high‐dimensional multi‐objective model with target energy consumption, path distance, number of dead nodes, and communication delay is constructed. Second, to implement this model, an interval SPEA2 algorithm (I‐SPEA2) that introduces an environmental response mechanism is proposed. I‐SPEA2 treats individual target interval values as ranges of values on a two‐dimensional coordinate axis, forming a quadrilateral, calculates individual size probabilities based on the area to determine the dominant relationship, and combines fixed distance and interval overlap to eliminate redundant individuals. The simulation results show that the interval dynamic model is effective in prolonging the lifecycle of WSN as well as the proposed algorithm reduces the mortality rate of the nodes by 15%, 28%, 13%, 16%, and 21% compared with other algorithms.

The rapid development of wireless power transfer technology brings forth innovative vehicle energy solutions and breakthroughs utilizing wireless sensor networks (WSNs). In most existing schemes, wireless rechargeable sensor networks (WRSNs) are generally equipped with one or more wireless charging vehicles (vehicles) to serve sensor nodes (SNs). These schemes solve the energy issue to some extent; however, due to off-road and speed limitations of vehicles, some SNs still cannot be charged in time, negatively affecting the lifetime of the networks. Our work proposes a new WRSN model equipped with one wireless charging drone (drone) with a constrained flight distance coupled with several wireless charging pads (pads) deployed to charge the drone when it cannot reach the subsequent stop. Our model solves this charging issues effectively and overcomes energy capacity limitations of the drone. Thus, a wireless charging pad deployment problem is formulated, which aims to apply the minimum number of pads so that at least one feasible routing path can be established for the drone to reach every SN in a given WRSN. Four feasible heuristics, three based on graph theory and one on geometry, are proposed for this problem. In addition, a novel drone scheduling algorithm, the shortest multi-hop path algorithm, is developed for the drone to serve charging requests with the assistance of pads. We examine the proposed schemes through extensive simulations. The results compare and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed schemes in terms of network density, region size and maximum flight distance.

Collaborative mobile charging policy for perpetual operation in large-scale wireless rechargeable sensor networks

In a wireless sensor network, the sensing and data transmission for sensors will cause energy depletion, which will lead to the inability to complete the tasks. To solve this problem, wireless rechargeable sensor networks (WRSNs) have been developed to extend the lifetime of the entire network. In WRSNs, a mobile charging robot (MR) is responsible for wireless charging each sensor battery and collecting sensory data from the sensor simultaneously. Thereby, MR needs to traverse along a designed path for all sensors in the WRSNs. In this paper, dual-side charging strategies are proposed for MR traversal planning, which minimize the MR traversal path length, energy consumption, and completion time. Based on MR dual-side charging, neighboring sensors in both sides of a designated path can be wirelessly charged by MR and sensory data sent to MR simultaneously. The constructed path is based on the power diagram according to the remaining power of sensors and distances among sensors in a WRSN. While the power diagram is built, charging strategies with dual-side charging capability are determined accordingly. In addition, a clustering-based approach is proposed to improve minimizing MR moving total distance, saving charging energy and total completion time in a round. Moreover, integrated strategies that apply a clustering-based approach on the dual-side charging strategies are presented in WRSNs. The simulation results show that, no matter with or without clustering, the performances of proposed strategies outperform the baseline strategies in three respects, energy saving, total distance reduced, and completion time reduced for MR in WSRNs.

The dynamic routing algorithm for renewable wireless sensor networks with wireless power transfer

Recent advancement in the wireless power transfer technology has motivated the development of a wireless rechargeable sensor network (WRSN). In WRSNs, the formation of an optimal recharging schedule for each wireless charger vehicle is a well known NP-complete problem. To determine the optimal recharging schedule for each wireless charger vehicle, this paper presents a coverage-aware recharge scheduling scheme (CRS) where ACO-based metaheuristic algorithm is employed. In order to provide fast recharging in WRSN, the proposed scheme employs multiple wireless charger vehicles to perform the charging task. Performance analysis of the proposed scheme confirms its superiority in terms of charging latency.

Existing work on localization in wireless rechargeable sensor networks (WRSNs) assumes that the charger is equipped with an omnidirectional antenna. We notice that the current available COTS (Commercial off-the-shelf) energy harvesting kit such as the one manufactured by Powercast includes wireless charger with directional antenna. We consider the localization problem in a wireless rechargeable sensor network with a mobile wireless charger. We propose two efficient region dividing methods, Angle Division and Grid Division. Both exploit the field angle of the directional charger to localize individual sensor nodes. The Angle Division is more suitable for general convex polygons. Grid Division algorithm is efficient when the nodes are distributed uniformly and the area is approximate to a rectangle. Further, we extend the two methods by combining the charging time to improve the localization precision. To verify the design, we have extensively evaluated our design by both field experiments and large- scale simulations. The experiment and simulation results show that our algorithm can achieve a localization distance error of less than a quarter meter by as less as four stops.

The limited energy of the sensor nodes (SNs) has always been a major hindrance for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Wireless charging of the SNs is a promising alternative to solve the energy constraint problem in WSNs. The charging paradigm with such rechargeable SNs is known as wireless rechargeable sensor network (WRSN). While plenty research efforts have been made to improve the charging performance in a WRSN, little has been done to address the scheduling problem of the MCs having limited capacity. By scheduling problem of the MCs, we want to mean that how efficiently the capacity of multiple MCs can be utilized so that minimum number of MCs are used in order to fulfill the energy demands of the SNs. To fill this research lacuna, we propose three novel on-demand charging schemes which are termed as Pcharge, Bcharge, and Fcharge in this paper. The effectiveness of the proposed schemes is validated by simulation results which reveal that the proposed schemes can achieve promising performance in terms of tour length and capacity utilization of the MCs as compared to a state-of-the-art scheme.

Wireless energy transfer based on magnetic resonant coupling is a promising technology to replenish energy to sensor nodes in a wireless sensor network (WSN). However, charging sensor node one at a time poses a serious scalability problem. Recent advances in magnetic resonant coupling shows that multiple nodes can be charged at the same time. In this paper, we exploit this multi-node wireless energy transfer technology to address energy issue in a WSN. We consider a wireless charging vehicle (WCV) periodically traveling inside a WSN and charging sensor nodes wirelessly. We propose a cellular structure that partitions the two-dimensional plane into adjacent hexagonal cells. The WCV visits these cells and charge sensor nodes from the center of a cell. We pursue a formal optimization framework by jointly optimizing traveling path, flow routing and charging time. By employing discretization and a novel Reformulation-Linearization Technique (RLT), we develop a provably near-optimal solution for any desired level of accuracy.

Various communication services have been provided. They include environmental monitoring and/or control, ad-hoc communication between mobile nodes, and inter-vehicle communication in intelligent transport systems. As a means of facilitating the above advanced communication services, autonomous decentralized networks, such as wireless sensor networks (Akyildiz et al., 2002; Rajagopalan & Varshney, 2006), mobile ad-hoc networks (Perkins & Royer, 1999; Johnson et al., 2003; Clausen & Jaquet, 2003; Ogier et al., 2003), and wireless mesh networks (Yamamoto et al., 2009), have been intensively researched with great interests. Especially, a wireless sensor network, which is a key network to construct ubiquitous information environments, has great potential as a means of realizing a wide range of applications, such as natural environmental monitoring, environmental control in residential spaces or plants, object tracking, and precision agriculture (Akyildiz et al., 2002). Recently, there is growing expectation for a new network service by a wireless sensor network consisting of a lot of static sensor nodes arranged in a service area and a few mobile robots as a result of the strong desire for the development of advanced systems that can flexibly function in dynamically changing environments (Matsumoto et al., 2009). In this chapter, a large scale and dense wireless sensor network made up of many static sensor nodes with global positioning system, which is a representative network to actualize the above-mentioned sensor applications, is assumed. In a large scale and dense wireless sensor network, generally, hundreds or thousands of static sensor nodes limited resources, which are compact and inexpensive, are placed in a service area, and sensing data of each node is gathered to a sink node by inter-node wireless multi-hop communication. Each sensor node consists of a sensing function to measure the status (temperature, humidity, motion, etc.) of an observation point or object, a limited function of information processing, and a simplified wireless communication function, and it generally operates on a resource with a limited power-supply capacity such as a battery. Therefore, a data gathering scheme and/or a routing protocol capable of meeting the following requirements is mainly needed to prolong the lifetime of a large scale and dense wireless sensor network composed of hundreds or thousands of static sensor nodes limited resources. 1. Efficiency of data gathering 2. Balance of communication load among sensor nodes 3. Adaptability to network topology changes

Due to the breakthrough of wireless power transfer technology, wireless rechargeable sensor networks (WRSNs) have the potential to provide sustainable work. Most existing researches on WRSNs usually focus on the cases that mobile charging vehicle moves freely through the sensors. However, for some applications, such as bridge monitoring, WRSNs are implemented in a three-dimensional space with obstacles, so the charging path may be blocked by the obstacles. To cope with this problem, charging scheduling to replenish a wireless rechargeable sensor network for bridge monitoring by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is studied. The problem is formulated as an optimization problem through optimizing UAV navigation path and sensor energy allocation collaboratively. This optimization problem is hard to be solved as both path navigation and energy allocation are required to be optimized simultaneously. To circumvent this challenge, an improved ant colony system algorithm (IM-ACS) is proposed to plan the trajectory of the UAV between sensors. By integrating enhancement factors and dynamic pheromone intensity coefficients, the convergence of the algorithm is accelerated. Then, a two-stage algorithm is proposed to schedule charging sequence and assign energy with limited energy carried by the UAV in each charging period. Experiments and simulations show that the proposed approach achieves shorter feasible trajectory paths and longer network lifetime than those obtained by the compared methods.