Using Mobile Nodes in Wireless Sensor Networks with Wireless Power Transfer

Abstract

In this chapter, we introduce works on using mobile nodes in wireless sensor networks with wireless power transfer ability. The mobile nodes here can be mobile chargers or mobile sensor nodes. There are works discussing the energy provision problem considering mobility of sensors in the network although most works focus on the scenario where only chargers are mobile. We classify the works into two categories, namely, centralized approach and distributed approach. The former one refers to that the proposed method is centrally controlled and relies on global information of the network, and the latter one refers to that the proposed scheme works based on limited local information. As for centralized approach, we introduce several popular topics such as mobile charger planning, joint mobile charging and data gathering, using minimum mobile chargers, etc. As for the distributed approach, we present topics including on-demand charging, planning for a single mobile charger and coordination of multiple mobile chargers. There are more works on centralized approach than on distributed approach. Finally we conclude this chapter.