Autonomous Load Regulation Based Energy Balanced Routing in Rechargeable Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract

Recent progress in wireless charging technologies has greatly promoted the development of rechargeable wireless sensor networks (RWSN). The network lifetime of RWSN can be commonly extended through routing strategy and wireless charging technology. However, the node accepts the relay request of its neighbor unconditionally, and it cannot remove its overload on its own in a timely manner in traditional routing strategies. The energy balancing efficiency of the network may be limited by this passive mechanism, which poses a great challenge to obtaining optimal joint efficiency of routing and charging strategies. In this paper, we propose an autonomous load regulation mechanism-based energy balanced routing algorithm (ALRMR) for RWSN. In addition to an efficient framework of joint wireless energy transfer and multi-hop routing where the routing strategy is adapted to the charging scheme, an innovative load regulation mechanism is proposed. Under this mechanism, each node can actively adjust its own load by controlling its relay radius. The simulation demonstrates the advantages of our algorithm for energy balance efficiency and improving the network lifetime through the charging scheme and the innovative mechanism.