Cost minimization of wireless sensor networks with unlimited-lifetime energy for monitoring oil pipelines

Cyber-physical-system (CPS) has been widely used in both civil and military applications. Wireless sensor network (WSN) as the part and parcel of CPS faces energy problem because sensors are battery powered, which results in limited lifetime of the network. To address this energy problem, we take advantage of energy harvesting device (EHD) and study how to indefinitely prolong oil pipeline monitoring network lifetime by reasonable selecting EHD. Firstly, we propose a general strategy worst case-energy balance strategy (WC-EBS), which defines worst case energy consumption (WCEC) as the maximum energy sensor node could expend for oil pipeline monitoring WSN. When the energy collected by EHD is equal or greater than WCEC, network can have an unlimited lifetime. However, energy harvesting rate is proportional to the price of EHD, WC-EBS will cause high network cost. To reduce network cost, we present two optimization strategies, optimization workloadenergy balance strategy (OW-EBS ) and optimization first nodeenergy balance strategy (OF-EBS). The main idea of OW-EBS is to cut down WCEC by reducing critical node transmission workload; OF-EBS confirms critical node by optimizing each sensor node transmission range, then we get the optimal energy harvesting rate in OF-EBS. The experimental results demonstrate that OF-EBS can indefinitely extend network lifetime with lower cost than WC-EBS and OW-EBS, and energy harvesting rate P in each strategy satisfies P
^OF–EBS
⩽P
^OW–EBS
⩽P
^WC–EBS
.