Intelligent Router-Assisted Power Saving Medium Access Control for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

The limitation on the battery life has been a critical issue for the advancement of the mobile computers. Users encounter unsatisfactory battery power while using their mobile devices, especially on the occasions of transmitting data using the wireless networks. It has been studied that the amount of energy consumed within the mobile devices is significantly affected by the design of the Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol within the wireless interface. This paper presents a Intelligent Router-Assisted (IRouter) power-saving MAC algorithm that achieves energy conservation by predicting the next hopping node within the delivering route. With the assistance of the intelligent routers in the network, the packet delivery between several mobile nodes can be accomplished within the same beacon interval. The performance comparison between the proposed IRouter algorithm and the existing MAC protocols is conducted via simulations. It is observed that the IRouter scheme can achieve feasible performance in both energy conservation and routing efficiency.