Information Technology faculty member Hwajung Lee and students Catherine Greene, Bretny Khamphavong, Nancy White and Chloe Norris received $15,000 from the 2010-2011 Collaborative Research Experience for Undergraduates (CREU) program for their project “Multi-hop Wireless Electricity Charging Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks.”

According to Lee, the objective of the research is to integrate a wireless electricity technique into wireless sensor networks.  These networks monitor physical or environmental conditions through sensors.

A sensor is a tiny computer with extremely limited computational capacity, memory size, data transmission capacity and battery power.  Due to the limited battery power in each sensor, energy efficiency has been one of the most critical factors for the effectiveness of these sensors.  The group will research a way to integrate wireless electricity, also called witricity, into these networks.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to integrate witricity technology into wireless sensor networks while minimizing energy leakage and maximizing network lifetime,” says Lee.