Energy Balancing by Wireless Energy Transfer in Sensor Networks

Abstract

Wireless energy transfer is a technology to transmit electricity without wire, and it is a promising technology for charging battery of mobile devices. In battery powered sensor networks, it is important to balance electric energy of batteries of nodes in order to maximize the life time of networks. In this paper, we propose three distributed protocols to balance electric energy of batteries of nodes. The proposed algorithms are based on the population protocol model which is a computational model for networked nodes with very limited resources. The goals of the algorithms are twofold: minimizing the loss of electric energy caused by wireless transmission, and minimizing the time to balance. The proposed algorithms are evaluated by computer simulation.