Evaluating the energy-consumption reduction in a MANET by dynamically switching-off network interfaces

A power-conserving algorithm, based on the RTS/CTS dialogue of the IEEE 802.11 standard, is evaluated, which dynamically switches off the radio network interface card of nodes when they are neither transmitting nor receiving a packet.

Abstract

The design of energy-efficient routing algorithms is a fundamental problem in a mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) where battery energy is a limited resource. We evaluate a power-conserving algorithm, based on the RTS/CTS dialogue of the IEEE 802.11 standard which dynamically switches off the radio network interface card of nodes when they are neither transmitting nor receiving a packet. We evaluate the algorithm through simulations over four well-known routing algorithms: dynamic source routing (DSR), ad-hoc on demand distance vector (AODV), temporally-ordered routing algorithm (TORA), and destination-sequenced distance-vector routing (DSDV). The obtained results indicate that for all the evaluated routing protocols, the power savings are similar and range between 25 per cent and 60 per cent of the total energy.