Power-aware topology control for wireless ad-hoc networks

A power-aware approach in the context of topology control that allows the power consumption to be evenly distributed among network nodes, and thereby prolongs the network lifetime, is proposed in this research. Unlike power-aware routing schemes, where exact traffic flow and residual energy level of each node are required, our power-aware topology control only requires the residual energy levels and location information of the reachable neighboring nodes. When a node is making a decision on whether a wireless link between itself and a reachable neighboring node should be preserved in the topology being constructed, the decision is made based on not only the distance from its neighboring nodes but also the residual energy levels of itself and its neighboring nodes. Also, the topology is restructured from time to time based on the residual energy level of each node. The performance improvement by our power-aware topology control algorithm is shown through extensive simulations