Energy-Efficient Broadcasting in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks Using Directional Antennas

We consider the problem of energy efficient broadcasting in wireless ad hoc network where nodes have limited energy resources. We investigate the scope of using directional antennas for energy efficient broadcast routing in stationary networks and consider the case where wireless nodes can dynamically adjust their transmission power for each broadcast session. Minimum spanning tree (MST) has an interesting property that the longest edge in the tree is the shortest among all the spanning trees. We construct a broadcast tree using minimum spanning tree and show that use of directional antennas, with fixed orientation and fixed beamwidth, for broadcasting data over this broadcast tree strikes a balance in the energy consumption rate among nodes in the network and hence improves overall lifetime of the network.