Sensors, Vol. 19, Pages 3887: A Charging Algorithm for the Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Network with Imperfect Charging Channel and Finite Energy Storage (Sensors)

Recently, wireless energy transfer technology becomes a popular way to address energy shortage in wireless sensor networks. The capacity of the mobile wireless charging car (WCV) and the wireless channel between the WCV and the sensor are two important factors influencing the energy efficiency of the wireless sensor network, which has not been well considered. In this paper, we study the energy efficiency of a wireless rechargeable sensor network charged by a finite capacity WCV through an imperfect wireless channel. To estimate the energy efficiency, we first propose a new metric named waste rate, which is defined as a function of the charging channel quality. Then, energy efficiency optimization is modeled as minimizing the waste rate. Through optimizing the distance between the WCV and sensor nodes, the set of optimal charging sensor nodes is obtained. By using the Hamiltonian circle, the nearest neighbor algorithm is proposed to find the traveling path of the WCV. Furthermore, to avoid the untimely death of sensor nodes and the coverage hole, an extended node dynamic replacement strategy is proposed. The simulation results show that the proposed method can reduce the waste rate and the total charging time; i.e., the sum of traveling time and charging delay can be significantly reduced, which indicates that the proposed algorithm can improve the energy efficiency of the network.