Combining Power Management and Power Control in Multihop IEEE 802.11 ad hoc Networks

Abstract

Power-saving is a major topic in mobile network research. MAC and network level power-saving schemes can be divided into two categories. One is power management, which tries to put as many idle stations into sleep mode as possible. The other is power control, whose goal is to minimize the transmission power by reducing the transmitting range. However, the two catagories of schemes do not take advantage of each other. In this paper, we propose an algorithm which integrates and balances both of the two approaches to get maximal power conservation, and closely combines power-saving and routing in the wireless ad hoc networks. Using power consumption figures measured and reported by other researchers, a simulation of power control, power management and the proposed combined algorithms has been set up and results are presented