Fueling Wireless Networks perpetually: A case of multi-hop wireless power distribution∗

Inspired by the recent invention of a high efficiency Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) technique, we propose in this paper the Perpetual Wireless Networks (PWNs) as a novel wireless networking paradigm. Similar to the conventional wireless (data) access point, a PWN has a power access point, from which electrical power is injected and distributed into the network in a form of multi-hop transfer. Consequently, we lay our focus on this new type of multi-hop flow problems concerning not data but power. We formulate and analyze a set of such power flow problems (some are joint with data flow), and we devise algorithms to solve them. The intriguing insights obtained from solving these optimization problems offer instructive guidance for future studies on real PWN constructions.