Charging coverage for energy replenishment in wireless sensor networks

The energy of sensors is critical to the performance of any battery operated wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The new emerging wireless power transfer technology can potentially relieve the energy intension of WSNs. To effectively replenish the energy of sensors, in this paper, we investigate the minimum charging coverage problem, which aims to recharge a set of sensors in a given area with the minimum number of wireless chargers. We introduce a partition algorithm to address this charging coverage challenge, and through theoretical analysis, we prove that the proposed algorithm can develop a solution close to the optimal one with guaranteed approximation ratio.