Bioinspired Cooperative Wireless Energy Transfer for Lifetime Maximization in Multihop Networks

To extend the lifetime of a multihop network by addressing energy shortages in wireless nodes, we apply wireless energy transfer (WET) technology to the multihop transmission. Considering a linear multihop topology, we establish a system model for a WET-enabled multihop transmission and formulate an optimization problem that obtains the optimal WET time of each node to maximize the lifetime of multihop networks. To solve this problem, we adopt a flocking model inspired by the similarity between flocking behaviors and WET-enabled multihop transmissions. Applying the underlying principles of the flocking model, we propose a bioinspired cooperative WET (BiCoWET) algorithm, in which each node adjusts its own WET time to equalize the lifetime of all nodes in a distributed manner. Theoretical analysis verifies that the proposed BiCoWET algorithm achieves optimality with exponential convergence. The intensive simulation shows that the proposed BiCoWET outperforms the conventional multihop transmission methods without WET and maximizes the network lifetime by equalizing the lifetime of all nodes.