Utilizing the Neglected Back Lobe for Mobile Charging

Benefitting from the breakthrough of wireless power transfer technology, the lifetime of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) can be significantly prolonged by scheduling a mobile charger (MC) to charge sensors. Compared with omnidirectional charging, the MC equipped with directional antenna can concentrate energy in the intended direction, making charging more efficient. However, all prior arts ignore the considerable energy leakage behind the directional antenna (i.e., back lobe), resulting in energy wasted in vain. To address this issue, we study a fundamental problem of how to utilize the neglected back lobe and schedule the directional MC efficiently. Towards this end, we first build and verify a directional charging model considering both main and back lobes. Then, we focus on jointly optimizing the number of dead sensors and energy usage effectiveness. We achieve these by introducing a scheduling scheme that utilizes both main and back lobes to charge multiple sensors simultaneously. Finally, extensive simulations and field experiments demonstrate that our scheme reduces the number of dead sensors by 49.5% and increases the energy usage effectiveness by 10.2% on average as compared with existing algorithms.