Reducing energy consumption in a clustered MANET using the intra cluster data-dissemination protocol (Icdp)

An efficient and reliable solution to data broadcasting is hard to obtain. Reliable energy-efficient data broadcasting is even harder to obtain when dealing with wireless networks where battery energy is a limited resource. We present a study which evaluates different power aware approaches to provide reliable broadcasting in a dynamic MANET. We present the intra-cluster data-dissemination protocol (Icdp). The Icdp is used to group nodes around a special one, called the cluster leader (CL). The CL centralizes the power management mechanism and acts as a proxy for data transfer between the cluster and the rest of the nodes in the region. When a cluster node enables the power management it goes into "sleep" mode, to minimize power consumption. The CL buffers data frames for power saving stations and delivers them on station request. We periodically distribute the cluster leader role among all the nodes inside the cluster to not overload a single node. We compare few different traffic broadcasting policies and evaluate their impact comparing Icdp to a classical IEEE 802.11 scheme. We show that in constant bit rate (CBR) and variable bit rate (VBR) cases, we can save up to 30% of NIC's energy, while preserving packet end-to-end delay and packet loss rate values.