Q-GSL: a framework for energy-conserving wireless multi-hop ad hoc networks

The intricate problem of energy conservation in wireless ad hoc networks is of great significance due to the limited battery capacity of the participating mobile devices. In this paper, we propose a novel framework, namely quasi-guaranteed system lifetime (Q-GSL), which allows the admission of flows without jeopardizing the limited energy of the wireless stations. A noteworthy feature of Q-GSL is that it provides a means for contention mitigation and load balancing. The upper bound on the packet rate is computed in the absence of the energy overheads associated with routing, contention resolution, channel sensing, etc. Hence, the upper bounds on the amount of data transmitted by a source node per unit time. Likewise, we study the main characteristics of the proposed techniques. Our experiments reveal that load balancing is achieved amongst the routes and the nodes in the wireless ad hoc network without violating any of the energy constraints, and while adhering to a pre-computed deterministic minimum system lifetime.