UAV Based Wireless Charging of Sensor Networks Without Prior Knowledge
Najeeb W. Najeeb, Carrick Detweiler
Abstract
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can charge Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks (WRSNs) in remote or hard to access locations. However, the charging efficiency is heavily affected by the distance between the wireless transmitter and receiver. This efficiency impacts the possible power level increase of each charged node. Most charging algorithms require full knowledge of sensor nodes' power levels to identify the nodes to charge. Collecting this power information adds overhead to the network and limits scalability. We propose and implement Charging with Power Transfer Efficiency Compensation (CPTEC), an algorithm that charges a WRSN without the need for a priori knowledge of the nodes' power levels. We show that CPTEC compensates for efficiency drops, due to landing alignments, making it practical for real-world power transfer scenarios. Our results show that CPTEC is able to perform with a median at ≈ 72% of the optimal performance of a full knowledge algorithm that assumes maximum power transfer efficiency, while other work drops to ≈ 22%. Under constant maximum efficiency CPTEC performs ≈ 90% of the optimal full knowledge case.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{iros2018_uavbasedwireless,
title = {UAV Based Wireless Charging of Sensor Networks Without Prior Knowledge},
author = {Najeeb W. Najeeb and Carrick Detweiler},
booktitle = {IROS 2018},
year = {2018}
}