A Novel Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Charging Scheme for Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks in an Urban Bus System

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are implemented in many aspects of daily life, such as Internet of Things applications, industrial automation, and intelligent agriculture. Sensors are typically powered by batteries. Chargers can be used to supply power to sensor nodes and thus extend the lifetime of WSNs. This special type of network is named a wireless rechargeable sensor network (WRSN). However, due to the limited battery power and different deployment locations of the sensors, efficiently moving the chargers from the current sensor nodes to the next sensor nodes is a challenge. In this study, we propose an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-based charging scheme in an urban bus system, involving the coordination between UAVs and bus schedules. The UAVs can be recharged by urban buses and then supply the power to sensor nodes. We implemented three charging strategies: naïve, shortest path, and max power. In the naïve strategy, the UAVs fly directly to sensor nodes when the sensors are lacking power. In the shortest path strategy, the minimum distance between the sensor node and bus location is calculated, and the UAVs fly the shortest path to the sensor nodes. In the maximum power charging strategy, the UAV that has the highest battery power is assigned to work. The experimental results show that the shortest path charging and max power charging strategies perform better than naïve charging in different parameter settings. To prolong the lifetime of the network system, adjusting the bus frequency according to the number of nearby sensors around the bus route is favorable.