Networked Movable Fuel-Supply Stations for Vehicles and Its Performance

A fuel-supply system using movable fuel-supply vehicles (FSVs) is proposed and its performance is evaluated. Both FSVs and vehicles requesting fuel are equipped with networked sensors. The sensors in FSVs are location sensors, and those in vehicles requesting fuel are for determining the remaining amount of fuel and the location of the vehicle. The time from when a fuel request is generated until the request is satisfied is the most basic performance metric for this system. Explicit formulas for the probabilistic distribution of this request time are also derived. Numerical examples show that the number of movable FSVs can be smaller than that of fixed fuel stations by about 80% or more than two orders of magnitude. This result suggests that movable FSVs may reduce the cost of the fuel supply infrastructure for alternative-fuel vehicles such as fuel-cell vehicles. key words: sensor network, performance evaluation, networked movable fuel-supply stations, networked vehicles, fuel-supply for vehicles