Power Aware Cluster Efficient Routing in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

In Ad Hoc networks a routing protocol is either proactive or reactive. The former maintains consistent up-to-date routing information from each node to every other node in the network, whereas the latter creates route to the destination only when desired by the source node using “flooding”. In flooding packets are broadcast to all destinations with the expectation that they eventually reach their intended destination. This proves to be very costly in terms of the throughput efficiency and power consumption. For reactive protocols, researchers have tried to enhance the throughput efficiency and reduce power consumption using techniques that cut down flooding. In this paper we propose a routing protocol called Power Aware Cluster Efficient Routing (PACER) protocol for multi-hop wireless networks. In PACER, the network is dynamically organized into partitions called clusters with the objective of maintaining a relatively stable effective topology. The protocol uses the Weight Based Adaptive Clustering Algorithm (WBACA), developed by us for cluster formations. The main objective is to significantly reduce the number of overhead messages and the packet transfer delay. We demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed protocol with respect to average end-to-end delay, control overheads, throughput efficiency and the number of nodes involved in routing.