POWER AWARE ROUTING IN MOBILE AD HOC NETWORKS: A SURVEY

Power consumption is a crucial design concern in Wireless ad hoc networks since wireless nodes are typically
battery limited. Power consumption can occur due to receiving the data, transmitting the data traffic, mobility etc. Power
failure of mobile node not only affects the node itself but also its ability to forward packets on behalf of others and hence
overall network lifetime. It might not be possible to replace/recharge a mobile node that is powered by batteries. To take
full advantage of life time of nodes, traffic should be routed in a way that power consumption is minimized. Power Aware
Routing is a consideration in a way that it minimizes the energy consumption while routing the traffic, aims at minimizing
the total power consumption of all the nodes in the network, minimizing the overhead etc and thus, at maximizing the
lifespan of the network using some Power Aware Routing Protocols. Although establishing correct and efficient routes is
an important design issue in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), a more challenging goal is to provide power efficient
routes because mobile nodes operation time is the most critical limiting factor. This paper surveys and classifies the power
aware routing protocols proposed for MANETs. They minimize either the active communication energy required to
transmit or receive packets or the inactive energy consumed when a mobile node stays idle but listens to the wireless
medium for any possible communication requests from other nodes. Transmission power control, load distribution and
power management approaches are used to minimize active communication energy while sleep/power-down mode
approach is used to minimize inactive communication energy using some power aware metrics like energy consumed per
packet, time to network partition, variance in node power levels, cost per packet, throughput, end-to-end delay, packet
delivery ratio etc. Each protocol has definite advantages/disadvantages and is well suited for certain situations. The
purpose of this paper is to facilitate the research efforts in combining the existing solutions to offer a more power efficient
routing mechanism.