Efficient Protocols for Peer-to-Peer Wireless Power Transfer and Energy-Aware Network Formation

Wireless power transfer provides the potential to efficiently replenish the energy and prolong the lifetime of nodes in ad hoc networks. Current state-of-the-art studies utilize strong charger stations (equipped with large batteries) with the main task of transmitting their available energy to the network nodes. Different to these works, in this chapter, we investigate interactive, “peer-to-peer” wireless energy exchange in populations of resource-limited mobile agents, without the use of any special chargers. The agents in this model are capable of mutual energy transfer, acting both as transmitters and receivers of wireless power. In such types of ad hoc networks, we propose protocols that address two important problems: the problem of energy balance between agents and the problem of distributively forming a certain network structure (a star) with an appropriate energy distribution among the agents. We evaluate key performance properties (and their trade-offs) of our protocols, such as their energy and time efficiency, as well as the achieved distance to the target energy distribution.