Position-based routing with a power-aware weighted forwarding function in MANETs

Power-aware routing is crucial for battery-finite mobile nodes in MANETs. Energy consumption optimization consists of not only energy saving, but also energy-balanced usage of nodes. In this paper, we present a new position-based routing protocol with a power-aware weighted forwarding function, named PAWF. With this forwarding function, the energy consumption and energy residual values of mobile nodes are asymmetrically combined with forwarding achievement and used to make decisions of hop by hop routing. PAWF routing requires only the local information of strict neighbors and the destination. With the power-awareness, the over-usage of mobile nodes is avoided and the lifetime of the network is increased due to energy consumption balance. Based on simulation results, PAWF is also shown to be able to provide global energy-sufficient near-optimal paths by making locally optimal choices, which offers the possibility to implement further QoS routing in MANETS.