Evaluating the Energy-Consumption Reduction in a MANET by Dynamically Switching-off Network Interfaces

Abstract: The design of energy-efficient routing algorithms is a fundamental problem in a Mobile Ad-Hoc Network (MANET) where battery energy is a limited resource. In this paper we evaluate a power-conserving algorithm, based on the RTS/CTS dialogue of the IEEE 802.11 standard, which dynamically switches off radio the Network Interface Card of nodes when they are neither transmitting nor receiving a packet. We evaluate the algorithm through simulations over four well-known routing algorithms: DSR, AODV, TORA, and DSDV. The obtained results indicate that for all the evaluated routing protocols, the power savings are similar and range between 25 percent and 60 percent of the total energy.