Trading latency for energy in wireless ad hoc networks using message ferrying

Power management is a critical issue in wireless ad hoc networks where the energy supply is limited. In this paper, we investigate a routing paradigm, message ferrying (MF), to save energy while trading off data delivery delay. In MF, special nodes called ferries move around the deployment area to deliver messages for nodes. The reliance on the movement of ferries to deliver data increases the delivery delay. However, nodes can save energy by disabling their radios when ferries are far away. To exploit this feature, we present a power management framework, in which nodes switch their power management modes based on the knowledge of ferry location. We evaluate the performance of our scheme using ns-2 simulations and compare it with dynamic source routing (DSR). Our simulation results show that MF achieves energy savings as high as 95% compared to DSR without power management and still delivers more than 98% of data. In contrast, power-managed DSR delivers much less data than MF to achieve similar energy savings. In the scenario of heavy traffic load, power-managed DSR delivers less than 20% of data. MF also shows robust performance for highly mobile nodes, while the performance of DSR suffers significantly. Thus, delay tolerant applications should use MF rather than a multihop routing protocol to save energy efficiently when both routing approaches are available.