Energy analysis of distributed neighbour discovery algorithms based on frame slotted-ALOHA for cooperative networks

The design of communications protocols that exploit the availability of both cellular and short-range radio access interfaces in a same terminal can be exploited to improve the energy efficiency of wireless communications networks. Devices equipped with a cellular radio interface can act as dynamic gateways to provide energy-constrained devices in its single-hop cluster with cellular connectivity. For this purpose, any device may discover its single-hop neighbourhood in order to select the appropriate gateway candidates. Conventional neighbour discovery algorithms have a great cost in terms of delay and energy consumption, and thus they are not the optimal approach for energy-constrained devices. This paper presents the energy consumption analysis of two distributed neighbour discovery algorithms based on frame slotted-ALOHA, and evaluates their performance in terms of energy consumption. In addition, it describes the conditions that minimize the energy consumption in the discovery process.