Residual Battery Capacity Based Routing Protocol for Extending Lifetime of Mobile Ad Hoc Network

Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) has mobile and battery operated nodes which can provide communication facility to users irrespective of any infrastructure and centralized control. It is a self-deployed and self-operated communication network having typical applications such as disaster relief, information exchange at conference or classroom and battle field communication etc. MANETs have many challenges such as limited battery power, lack of centralized control and security, the need for special routing protocols etc. Due to highly dynamic and dispersed nature of MANETs, routing becomes one of the important concerns in MANET. The network can get partitioned due to mobility and/or exhaustion of the nodes. Therefore, energy efficient routing is of great importance for the MANETs. This paper presents a simulation study of existing MANET routing protocols like AODV, DSR, and DSDV based on various metrics like packet delivery ratio (PDR), energy consumption, throughput, overheads, network lifetime and end to end delay to select a suitable protocol for further modification in order to improve the energy efficiency of the nodes. The simulation results show that the DSR protocol performs better than that of AODV and DSDV. Hence DSR protocol is modified based on an algorithm that considers the nodes' residual energy to extend the network lifetime. Implementation of modified protocol shows 22 % increase in the network lifetime and 13 % reduction in energy consumption.