Optimizing Network Control Traffic in Resource Constrained MANETs

The exchange of network state beacons (NSBs) is crucial to monitoring the dynamic state of MANETs like sensor networks. The rate of beacon exchange (F_X) and the network state define both the time and nature of a proactive action to reconfigure the network in order to combat network performance degradation at a time of crisis. It is thus essential to select the F_X within optimized bounds, so that minimal control traffic is incurred due to state maintenance and reconfiguration activities. This paper presents a novel distributed model that selects optimized bounds for F_X selection and adapts dynamically to the load profile of the network for energy efficient monitoring and proactive reconfiguration.