Wireless power transfer for wireless sensor networks using hybrid algorithm

Over the past few years, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) has grabbed a lot of attention because of their extensive variety of budding applications. The lifetime of the WSN depends on battery life of the sensor node. Due to the limited capacity of the battery, the WSN is not able to meet present day's demands. Thus, Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) is a promising technique for charging the sensor nodes using algorithms based on Branch and Bound (B&B), having minimum computational complexity. In this paper, a hybrid algorithm is developed to facilitate WPT, combination of a Branch and Bound (B&B) and Beam Selection (BS) algorithm. In the proposed algorithm, energy is transferred to sensor nodes through dedicated energy transmitters and selected sector antenna. The developed algorithm has been simulated using 4 energy transmitters and 100 sensor nodes. Moreover the developed algorithm is compared with Power Efficient Advanced Node Clustering Hierarchical (PEANCH) Protocol. Results show that, energy utilization is linearly proportional to number of sensors in the WSN. When compared to PEANCH protocol, the lifetime of the network is increased by 33.33%. However energy consumption is decreased by 3 times, since energy is transmitted from a selected sector antenna of the scheduled energy transmitter, rather than Omni-directional antenna.