Smart Energy Harvesting for Internet of Things Networks

Abstract

In this article, we address the problem of prolonging the battery life of Internet of Things (IoT) nodes by introducing a smart energy harvesting framework for IoT networks supported by femtocell access points (FAPs) based on the principles of Contract Theory and Reinforcement Learning. Initially, the IoT nodes’ social and physical characteristics are identified and captured through the concept of IoT node types. Then, Contract Theory is adopted to capture the interactions among the FAPs, who provide personalized rewards, i.e., charging power, to the IoT nodes to incentivize them to invest their effort, i.e., transmission power, to report their data to the FAPs. The IoT nodes’ and FAPs’ contract-theoretic utility functions are formulated, following the network economic concept of the involved entities’ personalized profit. A contract-theoretic optimization problem is introduced to determine the optimal personalized contracts among each IoT node connected to a FAP, i.e., a pair of transmission and charging power, aiming to jointly guarantee the optimal satisfaction of all the involved entities in the examined IoT system. An artificial intelligent framework based on reinforcement learning is introduced to support the IoT nodes’ autonomous association to the most beneficial FAP in terms of long-term gained rewards. Finally, a detailed simulation and comparative results are presented to show the pure operation performance of the proposed framework, as well as its drawbacks and benefits, compared to other approaches. Our findings show that the personalized contracts offered to the IoT nodes outperform by a factor of four compared to an agnostic type approach in terms of the achieved IoT system’s social welfare.

Internet of Things-Based Control of Induction Machines: Specifics of Electric Drives and Wind Energy Conversion Systems

“…Power supply for small devices, sensors, recharging batteries. Self-powered IoT devices 9/0 [20,91] Smart energy harvester IoT networks power supplies 4 [92] Solar installation with IoT Solar array trackers with IoT 10 [93] Photovoltaic generation with IoT Monitoring photovoltaics in decentralized remote plants 6 [94] Experimental IoT system for PV generation, monitors voltage, current, power, and measures meteorological variables.…”

“…Triboelectric nanogenerators, which have simple manufacturing and are lightweight, are new energy topics which emerged with the development of IoT [20]. Further developments involve a triboelectric nanogenerator for self-powered IoT devices [91], and a smart energy harvester system for IoT networks [92].…”

Exploiting Battery Storages With Reinforcement Learning: A Review for Energy Professionals

“…For example, Sultan et al [98] optimize the selection of active sensors in an IoT sensor network to achieve the required data communication task so that the total energy consumption at the IoT nodes is minimized. As another example, Sangoleye et al [99] find the optimal base station for each IoT node to connect to. In both of these examples, authors assume that these optimizations achieve the ultimate goal of the research, which is to prolong the battery lifetime at the sensor nodes through reducing the energy consumption.…”

“…2) ENERGY HARVESTING If minimizing energy consumption is not sufficient or practical for prolonging the battery lifetime, energy harvesting approaches are used to recharge the battery. Sangoleye et al [99] identify the best base station to connect to for energy harvesting, whereas Chen et al [101] migrate computation tasks to nodes that are best positioned for harvesting. Elmagid et al [67] schedule packet transmissions in a way that is optimal for energy harvesting.…”

Trajectory Optimization for Fast Sensor Energy Replenishment using UAVs as RF sources

“…Recent works have studied the usage of radio-frequency (RF) signals for energy harvesting systems [3]. The use of UAVs as chargers to enhance wireless sensor network lifetime has already gained attention lately.…”