Fair Energy Division Scheme to Permanentize the Network Operation for Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks

Abstract

In the past years, the energy constraint problem is known as a design issue of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) due to equipping the sensor nodes with limited power supplies. During the last few years, Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks (WRSNs) have gained researchers attention. In a WRSN, the sensor nodes are equipped with RF circuits, which enables them to receive energy from Wireless Mobile Chargers (WMC). However, most of the existing wireless charging algorithms consider the unlimited power budget for WMCs, which is the opposite of feasibility of a real network environment. Likewise, most of the previous works fail to take full advantage of WMC as it starts recharging the nodes when their energy level reaches a threshold, which leads to increasing the inactive time of WMC. Moreover, although previous works employed WMCs, the network lifetime is limited. However, optimal division of the energy of WMC among nodes can guarantee the perpetual network operation. Therefore, proposing an efficient method that jointly solves these challenges is required. In this paper, a new Fair Energy Division Scheme (FEDS) is presented, which undertakes the permanent network operation by optimizing the energy division at the beginning of each cycle. Simulation results exhibit that FEDS achieves perpetual network lifetime. In addition, the proposed scheme improves energy efficiency, (25%) compared to Uneven Cluster-based Mobile Charging (UCMC) and (75%) compared to Nearest-Job-Next Preemption NJNP; travelling time of WMC, (50%) compared to UCMC and (75%) compared to NJNP. In conclusion, the proposed protocol significantly improves network.

Keywords

• Perpetual network operation
• wireless rechargeable sensor networks
• mobile charger scheduling