Energy‐efficient virtual grid aided routing for MANETs

Abstract

Purpose

In a mobile ad hoc network (MANET), design of energy‐efficient routing schemes is essential for prolonging the network lifetime. The purpose of this paper is to show that one way to achieve energy efficiency in routing is to utilize location information, which becomes practical due to the recent increasing availability of low‐cost and reliable positioning devices.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper proposes an eight‐direction forwarding virtual grid aided (VGA) routing scheme that uses location information to save energy. As a grid‐based scheme, VGA divides the whole network area into virtual grids.

Findings

By using eight‐direction forwarding, the proposed VGA scheme outperforms the previous four‐direction forwarding geographical adaptive fidelity (GAF) protocol. The proposed VGA scheme is motivated by the fact that, in the GAF protocol, forwarding to the four diagonal neighboring grids cannot be done in one single hop, although most nodes in these grids can hear the signal.

Originality/value

Theoretical analysis shows the eight‐direction forwarding protocol performs better than the four‐direction one unless the forwarding direction has an angle of less than 15^○ with the horizontal or vertical grid axis. Simulation supports the fact that the eight‐direction forwarding VGA scheme has better energy performance than the four‐direction forwarding GAF scheme without sacrificing any routing performance.

Citation

Wang, Z., Li, H. and Zhang, J. (2010), "Energy‐efficient virtual grid aided routing for MANETs", International Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 272-285. https://doi.org/10.1108/17427371011084248