Hop-Efficient and Power-Optimized Routing Strategy in a Decentralized Mesh Network Using Directional Antenna

This paper addresses a new routing strategy keeping the power of each node as an important constraint for routing in a fully decentralized mesh networks utilizing the additional advantages of a directional antenna. Unlike the most widely used principles in routing this strategy doesn´t always focus on minimizing the number of hops but also ensures that the battery power of each node is utilized optimally as well. In this proposed strategy if the node has depleted its power then alternate paths would be calculated for routing, selecting the nodes such that it is hop-efficient and power-optimized. This strategy also ensures a perfect load balancing or load sharing among the network. Using directional antenna ensures that its range extension capabilities coupled with the space division multiple access mechanism provide additional enhancements to the strategy. Moreover the power requirement of the directional antenna is also much less then its omni directional counterpart. We clearly illustrate and quantify the benefits of the proposed strategy and protocol scalability using simulations