Target Localization and Power Allocation Using Wireless Energy Harvesting Sensors

As radio-frequency (RF) based wireless energy harvesting technology can provide remote and continuous power to low-power devices, e.g., wireless sensors, it may be a substitute for batteries and extend the lifetime of the wireless sensor networks. In this paper, we propose a wireless energy harvesting localization system (WEHLoc), which contains batteryless wireless sensors as anchors and an energy access point (E-AP) to transfer power to the anchors. We consider a passive target localization scenario, in which the anchors monitor the target and send the sensed ranging data back to the E-AP. Additionally, we formulate the optimal estimation accuracy problem which is a 0–1 mixed-integer programming problem and relates to the energy beam, target transmitted power, and deployed anchor density. Then, we develop the power allocation scheme of the E-AP to solve the objective. In order to reduce the complexity, we propose a heuristic method that converts the maximum estimation accuracy problem into the energy efficiency problem and use linear programming to solve them. The simulations demonstrate that WEHLoc can be massively deployed in a wide area, and the estimation error and the power consumption are relatively low