An Approximation for Routing Planning, Mobile Charging, and Energy Sharing for Sensing Devices

Wireless Charging Vehicles (WCVs) have been widely explored as a means of enabling continuous operation of sensors that are powered by batteries. However, the energy consumption of WCVs can be inefficient, leading to insufficient energy supply for sensors that are located in challenging-to-access areas. Consequently, there is a need to design an effective charging and energy sharing scheme for sensors to improve the quality of service in this setup. This paper focuses on the Joint optimization of Mobile charging and Energy sharing of sensors (JOIN-ME) problem, which is known to be NP-hard. To address this challenge, we first transform JOIN-ME into a submodular maximization problem with general constraints. Subsequently, we propose the Routing planning, Mobile charging, and Energy sharing for Sensing devices (RMES) algorithm, which has an approximation ratio of 1/8(1-1/e). Finally, we conduct experiments to showcase the superior performance of RMES compared to existing baselines, under varying scales and constraints. Our work on the design of an efficient charging and energy sharing scheme for sensors can significantly improve the reliability and longevity of wireless sensor networks, enabling the deployment of these networks in critical applications such as environmental monitoring, crowd sensing, and security surveillance.