Minimizing sleep duration time for energy harvesting wireless sensor networks

In this paper, we propose an optimal data forwarding strategy to minimize sleep duration time for one-dimensional wireless sensor networks with energy harvesting sensor nodes. Based on the values of remaining energy and harvested energy of sensor nodes, the base station (data sink) determines the sleep duration time and the data forwarding strategy for the next data gathering round. According to the proposed algorithm, each sensor node can act as a relay node that receives and forwards the data toward data sink. This strategy also guarantees that every sensor nodes do not reach the energy depletion while minimizing sleep duration time, resulting in the maximum data gathering frequency. From the mathematical analysis and the numerical simulation, the proposed strategy shows 2.5% to 50% smaller sleep duration time compared to the simple data forwarding algorithms such as single hop or multi-hop data forwarding only.