Joint Optimization of Data Routing and Energy Routing in Energy-Cooperative WSNs

In today WSNs, sensor nodes are able to obtain energy from ambient with energy-harvesting components. However, the energy consumption are diverse across these nodes due to functional or geographical variation, which may lead to potential energy imbalance in network. In virtue of recent wireless power transfer (WPT) technology, the imbalance can be alleviated if all sensor nodes share energy with each other. In order to achieve the maximum energetically sustainable workload, we design an energy cooperation strategy in network by WPT, named energy routing, which should be jointly optimized with data routing simultaneously. An iterative distributed algorithm is developed to achieve the optimal data routing and energy routing solutions, where all sensors only need to exchange local information with neighbors. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve higher workload than algorithms without energy cooperation.