A Joint Optimization of Sensor Activation and Mobile Charging Scheduling in Industrial Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks

In this paper, a joint optimization of sensor activation and mobile charging scheduling for industrial wireless rechargeable sensor networks (IWRSNs) is studied. In the considered model, an optimal sensor set is selected to collaboratively execute a bundle of heterogeneous tasks of production-line monitoring, meeting the quality-of-monitoring (QoM) of each individual task. There is a mobile charger vehicle (MCV) which is scheduled for recharging sensors before their charging deadlines (i.e., the time instant of running out of their energy). Our goal is to jointly optimize the sensor activation and MCV scheduling for minimizing the energy consumption of the entire IWRSN, subjected to tasks’ QoM requirements, sensor charging deadlines and the energy capacity of the MCV. Unfortunately, solving this problem is non-trivial, because it involves solving two tightly coupled NP-hard problems. To address this issue, we design an efficient algorithm integrating deep reinforcement learning and marginal product based approximation algorithm. Simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed solution and demonstrate its superiority over counterparts.