Investigating performance of power-aware routing protocols for mobile ad-hoc networks

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) must contemplate energy-constrained operations due to the nodes´ strong dependency on batteries. Recently, we noticed the advent of studies to address the energy issue in MANETs. We compare the three most relevant proposals: minimum total transmission power routing (MTPR); min-max battery cost routing (MMBCR); conditional max-min battery capacity routing (CMMBCR). MTPR attempts to reduce the total transmission power consumed per packet, while MMBCR tries to consider the remaining battery power of nodes in order to prolong the lifetime of each node. Finally, CMMBCR is a hybrid protocol that tries to arbitrate between MTPR and MMBCR. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first simulation study to compare the three protocols with various MANET scenarios subject to variable mobility and network density using the ns-2 simulator. Through the simulation, we also show the importance of energy consumption due to overhearing when developing power-aware protocols for MANETs.