Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are one of the basic building blocks of Internet of Things (IoT) systems. However, the wireless sensing nodes in WSNs suffer from energy constraint issues because the replacement/ recharging of the batteries of the nodes tends to be difficult. Furthermore, a number of realistic IoT scenarios, such as habitat and battlefield monitoring, contain mobile sensing elements, which makes the energy issues more critical. This research paper focuses on realistic WSN scenarios that involve mobile sensing elements with the aim of mitigating the attendant energy constraint issues using the concept of radio-frequency (RF) energy extraction. The proposed technique incorporates a cluster head election workflow for WSNs that includes mobile sensing elements capable of RF energy harvesting. The extensive simulation analysis demonstrated the higher efficacy of the proposed technique compared with the existing techniques in terms of residual energy, number of functional nodes, and network lifetime, with approximately 50% of the nodes found to be functional at the 4000th, 5000th, and 6000th rounds for the proposed technique with initial energies of 0.25, 0.5 and 1 J, respectively.

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