Minimum-energy multicast in wireless ad hoc networks with adaptive antennas: MILP formulations and heuristic algorithms

In this paper, we consider wireless ad hoc networks that use adaptive antennas and have limited energy resources. To explore the advantages of power saving offered by the use of adaptive antennas, we consider the case of source initiated multicast traffic. We present a constraint formulation for the MEM (Minimum-Energy Multicast) problem in terms of MILP (Mixed Integer Linear Programming) for wireless ad hoc networks. An optimal solution to the MEM problem using our MILP model can always be obtained in a timely manner for moderately sized networks. In addition to the theoretical effort, we also present two polynomial-time heuristic algorithms called RB-MIDP and D-MIDP to handle larger networks for which the MILP model may not be computationally efficient. The experimental results show that our algorithms compare well with other proposals discussed in this paper.