Recharging Sensor Nodes Using Implicit Actor Coordination in Wireless Sensor Actor Networks

Wireless sensor actor networks are composed of sensor and actor nodes wherein sensor nodes outnumber resource-rich actor nodes. Sensor nodes gather information and send them to a central node (sink) and/or to actors for proper actions. The short lifetime of energy-constrained sensor nodes can endanger the proper operation of the whole network when they run out of power and partition the network. Energy harvesting as well as minimizing sensor energy consumption had already been studied. We propose a different approach for recharging sensor nodes by mobile actor nodes that use only local information. Sensor nodes send their energy status along with their sensed information to actors in their coverage. Based on this energy information, actors coordinate implicitly to decide on the timings and the ordering of recharges of low energy sensor nodes. Coordination between actors is achieved by swarm intelligence and the replenishment continues during local learning of actor nodes. The number of actors required to keep up such networks is identified through simulation using VisualSense. It is shown that defining the appropriate number of actor nodes is critical to the success of recharging strategies in prolonging the network lifetime.