Energy-Efficient Minimum Mobile Charger Coverage for Wireless Sensor Networks

Sustaining an operational wireless sensor network (WSN) is challenging due to the persistent need of the battery-powered sensors to be charged from time to time. The procedure of exploiting mobile chargers (MCs) that traverse to the fixed sensors of the network and wirelessly transfer energy in an efficient matter has been considered widely as a promising way to tackle this challenge. An optimization problem, called the mobile charger coverage problem, arises naturally to keep all of the sensors alive with an objective of determining both the minimum number of MCs required meeting the sensor recharge frequency and the schedule of these MCs. It is shown that this optimization problem becomes NP-hard in high-dimensional spaces. Moreover, the special case of the homogeneous recharge frequency of the sensors has already been proven to have a tractable algorithm if we consider whether the 1-dimensional space is a line or a ring. In this work, we seek to find a delicate border between the tractable and the intractable problem space. Specifically, we study the special case of heterogeneous sensors that take frequencies of 1's and 2's (lifetime of 1 and 0.5 time units) on a line, conjecture the special case's NP-hardness, propose a novel brute-force optimal algorithm, and present a linear-time greedy algorithm that gives a 1.5-approximation solution for the problem. Afterwards, we introduce the energy optimization problem of the MCs with the minimized number and solve it optimally. Comprehensive simulation is conducted to verify the efficiency of using our proposed algorithms that minimize the number of MCs.

Collaborative Charging Scheduling in Wireless Charging Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have the trouble of limited battery power, and wireless charging provides apromising solution to this problem, which is not easily affected by the external environment. In this paper, we studythe recharging of sensors in wireless rechargeable sensor networks (WRSNs) by scheduling two mobile chargers(MCs) to collaboratively charge sensors. We first formulate a novel sensor charging scheduling problem with theobjective of maximizing the number of surviving sensors, and further propose a collaborative charging schedulingalgorithm(CCSA) for WRSNs. In the scheme, the sensors are divided into important sensors and ordinary sensors.TwoMCs can adaptively collaboratively charge the sensors based on the energy limit ofMCs and the energy demandof sensors. Finally, we conducted comparative simulations. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithmcan effectively reduce the death rate of the sensor. The proposed algorithm provides a solution to the uncertaintyof node charging tasks and the collaborative challenges posed by multiple MCs in practical scenarios.

An Energy-Efficient Wireless Power Transmission-Based Forest Fire Detection System

Compared with the traditional techniques of forest fires detection,wireless sensor network(WSN)is a very promising green technology in detecting efficiently the wildfires.However,the power constraint of sensor nodes is one of the main design limitations of WSNs,which leads to limited operation time of nodes and late fire detection.In the past years,wireless power transfer(WPT)technology has been known as a proper solution to prolong the operation time of sensor nodes.In WPT-based mechanisms,wireless mobile chargers(WMC)are utilized to recharge the batteries of sensor nodes wirelessly.Likewise,the energy of WMC is provided using energy-harvesting or energy-scavenging techniques with employing huge,and expensive devices.However,the high price of energy-harvesting devices hinders the use of this technology in large and dense networks,as such networks require multiple WMCs to improve the quality of service to the sensor nodes.To solve this problem,multiple power banks can be employed instead of utilizing WMCs.Furthermore,the long waiting time of critical sensor nodes located outside the charging range of the energy transmitters is another limitation of the previous works.However,the sensor nodes are equipped with radio frequency(RF)technology,which allows them to exchange energy wirelessly.Consequently,critical sensor nodes located outside the charging range of the WMC can easily receive energy from neighboring nodes.Therefore,in this paper,an energy-efficient and cost-effective wireless power transmission(ECWPT)scheme is presented to improve the network lifetime and performance in forest fire detection-based systems.Simulation results exhibit that ECWPT scheme achieves improved network performance in terms of computational time(12.6%);network throughput(60.7%);data delivery ratio(20.9%);and network overhead(35%)as compared to previous related schemes.In conclusion,the proposed scheme significantly improves network energy efficiency for WSN.

Collaborative Mobile Charging and Coverage

Wireless energy charging using mobile vehicles has been a viable research topic recently in the area of wireless networks and mobile computing. This paper gives a short survey of recent research conducted in our research group in the area of collaborative mobile charging. In collaborative mobile charging, multiple mobile chargers work together to accomplish a given set of ob jectives. These ob jectives include charging sensors at different frequencies with a minimum number of mobile chargers and reaching the farthest sensor for a given set of mobile chargers, subject to various constraints, including speed and energy limits of mobile chargers. Through the process of problem formulation, solution construction, and future work extension for problems related to collaborative mobile charging and coverage, we present three principles for good practice in conducting research. These principles can potentially be used for assisting graduate students in selecting a research problem for a term project, which can eventually be expanded to a thesis/dissertation topic.

Inversion of electrical mobility measurements using bipolar or unipolar chargers for the arbitrary distribution of channels

The inversion of the particle size distribution from electrical mobility measurements is analyzed. Three different methods are adapted for a dot-matrix approach to the problem, especially for non-square or singular matrices, and applied to electrical mobility measurements from fixed or scanning voltages. Mul- tiply charged particles, diffusion losses, arbitrary voltage steps and noise were considered, which results in non-adjoining and overlapping transfer functions. The individual contribution of the transfer func- tions in each size interval was geometrically estimated, which requires only its characteristic mobilities. The methodology is applied to mobility measurements from particles charged with unipolar and bipolar chargers. However, the method can be extrapolated to any charging method with a defined charge distribution, and retrieval of the singly charged particle distribution and mean charge from a tandem differential mobility analysis configuration was successfully demonstrated.

Field study of a soft X-ray aerosol neutralizer combined with electrostatic classifiers for nanoparticle size distribution measurements

Most conventional aerosol neutralizers are based on radioactive sources, which are controlled by strict regulations restricting their handling, transport, and storage. The TSI 3087 soft X-ray （SXR） neutralizer circumvents these legal restrictions. The aim of the present work is to compare the performance of a standalone SXR aerosol neutralizer with that of conventional radioactive aerosol neutralizers based on 85Kr （TSI 3077） and 241Am （Grimm 5522） by performing field tests in a real environmental scenario. The results obtained when the SXR neutralizer was connected to a mobility particle sizer spectrometer （MPS）, different from the device suggested by the manufacturer, were comparable with those obtained with the use of radioactive aerosol neutralizers. In changing the neutralizer, the particle number concentrations, measured with the MPS connected to the SXR neutralizer, almost remained within the 10% uncertainty bounds for the particle size interval 10-300 nm, when diffusion losses inside the SXR tube were considered. Based on our comparisons, the SXR neutralizer can be regarded as a standalone instrument that could solve the problems associated with legal restrictions on radioactive neutralizers and fulfil the need for a portable instrument for different field test purposes.