Extending sensor network lifetime via wireless charging vehicle with an efficient routing protocol

To resolve the lifetime issue of sensor networks, various solutions, such as mobile-node deployment, energy-efficient routing protocol, and low-power hardware design (e.g., micro processor, small size RAM), have been proposed in modern sensor networks. However, these solutions can only extend the lifetime of sensor networks but cannot achieve immortal sensor networks. Fortunately, an emerging technology called wireless charging vehicle (WCV) can cope with the power constraint issue of sensor networks. Although a recent study had an excellent result on extending sensor networks lifetime by employing wireless charging vehicle, the study did not take the energy efficiency of wireless charging vehicle into design consideration. Therefore, in this work, we proposed an energy-efficient geometric routing protocol (GR-Protocol) to lower the power consumption and time complexity on computing a traversing path for wireless charging vehicle. GR-Protocol adapts a geometric solution which divides a sensor network's topology into grids and applies one-to-many recharging technique. Moreover, GR-Protocol is a dynamic, adjustable solution for sensor networks because it can dynamically reconfigure the wireless charging vehicle based on the current status of sensor networks.