Collecting data in smart cities using energy harvesting technology

Abstract

This work investigates the problems of extending the sensors network lifetime in smart cities. The limited capacity of the sensors’ batteries, and the difficulty of replacing the sensors’ batteries in hard-to-reach areas are some of the main challenges that contribute in reducing the lifetimes of the networks. The direction of this study is to use renewable energy as an energy source for collecting data from various infrastructures that are distributed throughout these cities. We present a model for data collection based on combining energy harvesting (EH) with the cluster head rotation feature, which results in flexible and sustainable networks that can be used in smart cities. Simulation results depict the performance of the proposed model with and without EH technology. The metrics used to compare the performance of the proposed model with and without EH technology include the consumed energy by sensors, number of live and dead sensors, and energy variance. The results show that the network lifetime increases when EH technology is used.