Optimal charger placement for wireless power transfer

• Published in: Computer networks (Amsterdam, Netherlands : 1999) Vol. 170; p. 107123
• Main Authors: Ding, Xingjian, Wang, Yongcai, Sun, Guodong, Luo, Chuanwen, Li, Deying, Chen, Wenping, Hu, Qian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 07.04.2020; Elsevier Sequoia S.A
• Subjects: Algorithms; Charging; Charging level; Maximization; Optimal charger placement; Optimization; Placement; Sensors; Wireless power transfer; Wireless power transmission; Wireless rechargeable sensor networks; Optimal charger placement; Wireless rechargeable sensor networks; Charging level; Wireless power transfer
• ISSN: 1389-1286; 1872-7069
• DOI: 10.1016/j.comnet.2020.107123

As a promising technology to achieve perpetual operation of battery-powered wireless sensor devices, wireless power transfer has attracted much attention recently. In wireless power transfer, the charger enables the energy to be wirelessly transmitted to the rechargeable sensor devices that are hungry for energy. Previous works mainly focus on maximizing the charging utility or minimizing the charging delay. This paper concerns two more practical issues of placing wireless chargers, the first one aims at minimizing the deployment cost of chargers while satisfying the overall requirement for charging levels, and the second one aims at maximizing the total charging levels subject to a deployment cost budget constraint. We investigate the above two optimal charger placement problems under two typical scenarios in which omni chargers and directional chargers are used, respectively. To resolve these two problems under the two charging models, we first prove their NP-hardness and then propose four approximation algorithms with proven performance guarantees. Finally, we conduct extensive simulation experiments to validate our designs, and the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms significantly outperform the baselines.