Design of a low-cost positioning framework for location aided energy efficient routing

In the area of mobile, ad-hoc networks, the quest for a GPS-free yet, location aided routing protocol is on for quite sometime. We have surveyed a number of GPS free position based routing algorithms. Specialized hardware in GPS-enabled nodes tends to increase the solution cost. On the other hand, completely GPS-free solutions typically stress on building a network-wide coordinate system. Such systems suffer from lack of mobility and high computational overhead. The proposed framework in this paper is characterized by GPS scarce positioning mechanism. A new network building methodology has been proposed by using only a handful of GPS enabled nodes. Lower dependence on specialized GPS hardware reduces the total cost of implementing the framework. Simulation results show that using the proposed positioning framework, Location aided routing (LAR) turns out to be more efficient in lowering mean hop and hence in utilizing the limited energy of mobile nodes. The improved and extended LAR protocol has been referred in the rest of the paper as Location Aided Cluster Based Energy-efficient Routing (LACBER) protocol.