Energy Harvesting and Spectrum Sharing Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

In this letter, a novel approach for solving the power and spectrum issues in wireless sensor network (WSN) has been proposed. Typically, a deployed sensor node is programmed to periodically send the data to the central base station (CBS). Moreover, most of the sensor nodes are deployed in a hostile environment where replacing a power supply may not be feasible. In the proposed work, we intend to solve the dual problem of spectrum and power for WSN by utilizing techniques such as cooperative spectrum sharing (CSS) and RF (radio frequency) energy harvesting, respectively. Specifically, by characterizing the WSN as an energy constrained secondary user, which will harvest power and spectrum from the primary user, we have shown that significant performance gains can be obtained for both primary and secondary users. Closed form expressions for outage probability under a Nakagami fading channel have been derived for both primary and secondary users. Furthermore, the theoretical results have been compared with simulation results to validate the proposed analysis.