On Energy-efficient Self-organizing Routing for Wireless Mobile Networks

The instant deployment without relying on an existing infrastructure makes the mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) a striking choice for many dynamic situations. An efficient MANET protocol may be applied to other important emerging wireless technologies such as wireless mesh and sensor networks. This paper proposes a hierarchical routing scheme that is scalable, energy efficient, and self-organizing. The new algorithm is called dynamic leader set generation (DLSG). It dynamically selects leader nodes based on traffic demand, locality, and residual energy level, and de-selects them based on residual energy. Energy consumption and traffic load are therefore balanced throughout the network, and the network reorganizes itself around the dynamically selected leader nodes. Time, space, and message complexities are formally analyzed; implementation issues are addressed. Incorporating the IEEE 802.11 medium access control mechanism including the power saving mode, performance evaluation is carried out by simulating DLSG and four existing hierarchical routing algorithms, which shows that DLSG successfully extends network lifetime by 20-50% while achieves a comparable level of network performance.