Fully power-aware and location-aware protocols for wireless multi-hop ad hoc networks

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is one consisting of a set of mobile hosts which can operate independently without infrastructure base stations. Power saving is a critical issue for MANET since most mobile hosts will be operated by battery power. In this paper, we address the power-saving issue for IEEE 802.11-based MANET from several protocol layers, including physical, MAC, and network layers. Our solution is fully power-aware and location-aware in the sense that it exploits location information of mobile hosts to achieve energy conservation on all these protocol layers. In comparison, existing protocols only exploit location information in limited layers (e.g., power control, power mode management, power-aware MAC, and power-aware routing). Similar to cellular networks, our approach is based on partitioning the network area into squares/hexagons, thus leading to a powerful energy and mobility management capability.