TRANSFER: transactions routing for ad-hoc networks with efficient energy

In future ad hoc networks, transactions are expected to become one of the primary types of flows. Transactions require only a very small number of packets to complete. Hence, providing optimal (or shortest path) routes to such transfers consumes more energy than the actual transfer. Conventional routing protocols are thus unsuitable for transactions. In this paper, we present a novel architecture for transaction routing in large-scale ad hoc networks. In our approach we aim at reducing the total energy consumption of successful delivery as opposed to finding shortest path routes. Our architecture uses a hybrid approach, where each mobile node obtains information about nodes in its proximity, up to R hops away, using a proactive link state protocol. Beyond the proximity, we introduce the novel notion of contacts that act as short cuts to reduce the degrees of separation between the request source and the target. We propose an efficient, on-demand, contact selection protocol. No location information is assumed. Extensive simulations are used to evaluate the performance of our protocol in terms of energy consumption and request success rate. We compare our architecture to flooding and ZRP. Our results show substantial power savings for our contact-based technique, especially for large networks.