Power-efficiencies of multi-hop paths for routing in wireless networks

In energy constrained wireless networks, routing algorithms should base the selection of the next hop from the available nodes after taking into consideration the power efficiency of each option. With multiple routing choices available, a systematic methodology to determine the power efficiency of each path in a decentralized manner is of significant importance. This paper analyzes the power-efficiency of using multi-hop versus direct paths while taking into account the overhead power due to transceiver electronics in addition to the MAC/protocol overhead. We first obtain the threshold l_o for the distance between the source and destination, within which direct routing is more efficient than multi-hop routing. The analysis is then extended for multi-hop routing where we obtain the optimal number of hops the route should have, and the optimal distance at which we should seek the next hop.