Peer-to-peer energy sharing in mobile networks: Applications, challenges, and open problems

Abstract Energy is a scarce resource in mobile wireless networks that consist of devices mainly powered by their batteries. Providing energy ubiquitously to these devices for making them functional for a long time is a challenging task. With the advent of energy sharing techniques, either by wired or wireless mediums, it is possible to extend the lifetime of such networks by utilizing the energy from other energy sources (e.g., chargers, other devices) within the network. In this paper, we explore the utilization of peer-to-peer energy sharing in various applications of mobile networks that consist of agents from low-power devices such as sensors to high-power ones such as electric vehicles. We provide an overview of the current research directions and developments of new protocols and algorithms that exploit the energy sharing techniques to solve the scarce energy problem in mobile networks. For each mobile networking domain, we highlight the specific challenges and describe the approaches followed to address them under various research problems. We also discuss open problems yet to be solved in each specific application.