On energy aware routing in wireless networks

Online energy aware routing in wireless networks is the problem of finding energy efficient routes that maximize the network lifetime without the knowledge of future message flows. To maximize network lifetime, the paths for message flows are chosen in such a way that the total energy consumed along the path is minimized while avoiding energy depleted nodes. Finding paths which consume minimum energy and finding paths which do not use energy depleted nodes lead to conflicting objectives. In this paper, we propose a two-phased energy-aware routing strategy that balances these two conflicting objectives by transforming the routing problem into a multi-metric widest path problem. We find that the proposed approach outperforms the best known algorithm in literature. We also demonstrate a simple but insightful relationship between the total energy required along a path and the minimum remaining energy of a node along the path.