Intelligent Charging Path Planning for IoT Network over Blockchain-Based Edge Architecture

A wireless rechargeable sensor network was proposed to extend the lifetime of the wireless sensor network. In this article, a charger is combined together with a self-propelled vehicle to provide a more flexible result of charger deployment. The dynamic chargers path selection problem is defined and mapped into the traveling salesman problem. Four metaheuristic algorithms for Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications are designed, and the higher fitness value between the charging path and the number of dead IoT devices is achieved. However, metaheuristic approaches may spend more time on searching solutions so that many IoT devices overuse limited power and fail to be charged for a long time, leading to power exhaustion. In this article, the edge computing technique is applied to accelerate the obtainment of charging paths with the well-defined edge/centralized unit switching. Moreover, to assure the calculated path trustworthy and will not be tampered with, the blockchain technology is adopted. The proposed architecture maintains high-level information credibility while transmitting the information of charging paths within the cloud and edge. The simulation results showed that the proposed method is capable of achieving better charging efficiency and less deployment cost.