Impacts of traveling paths on energy provisioning for industrial wireless rechargeable sensor networks

Traditional Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs) are constrained by limited battery energy. Recent breakthroughs in wireless power transfer have inspired the emergence of Industrial Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks (IWRSNs). IWRSNs usually contain one or more mobile chargers which can traverse the network to replenish energy supply for sensor nodes. The essential problem in mobile energy provisioning is to find the optimum path along which the mobile chargers travel to improve charging performance, prolong the battery lifespan of nodes and reduce the charging latency as much as possible. In this paper, we introduce and analyze the impacts of four traveling paths, namely, SCAN, HILBERT, S-CURVES(ad) and Z-curve on energy provisioning for IWRSNs. This evaluation aims to embody effective and essential properties that a superior traveling path should possess. Our simulations show that S-CURVES(ad) outperforms the other traveling paths in the lifetime of nodes and traveling efficiency. And at the same time, it has relatively small charging latency.