Minimizing Energy Consumption of the Mobile Charger in a Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Network

Abstract

＂Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks＂ (WRSNs) have received wide attention in recent years due to their potential to solve the energy problem. With a Mobile Charger (MC), the lifetime of a WRSN can be prolonged significantly, or theoretically speaking, to infinity. An important issue in deploying WRSNs is to minimize the total energy consumption of the MC. To address the problem, this paper proposes a method of service station deployment, and an energy efficient charging scheme. These methods are developed based on the fact that energy consumption of sensor nodes in a WRSN is extremely imbalanced. Simulation results validate the energy efficiency of the two methods.