Guest Editorial Special Issue on Wireless Energy Harvesting for Internet of Things

The ubiquitous sensor-rich mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, wearable devices, and smart vehicles) have been playing a vital role in the evolution of the Internet of Things (IoT), which bridges the gap between digital and physical spaces. The powerful computing/communication capacities, huge population, and inherent mobility make mobile device networks a much more flexible and cost-effective IoT solution than traditional wireless sensor networks. However, the energy issue of mobile terminals poses significant challenges to the widespread use of IoT: not only the mobile terminals have short lifetime with the proliferation of mobile applications but also the current networking and communication technologies are not adequately taking the energy efficiency into account. Therefore, the sustainable issue of IoT has attracted considerable attention from both academia and industry. Wireless energy harvesting (EH), and transfer technology was recently proposed as an effective mean to address this issue. It enables the mobile terminals to harvest energy from the ambient environment to prolong its battery. Although some forms of EH have been applied to WSNs, networking and communication solutions must be redesigned for wireless powered IoT with massive number of mobile terminals.