Due to limited resources, it is essential to optimize energy consumption in mobile ad hoc networks. There exist different ways to optimize energy usage for mobile ad hoc network. Our thesis proposes usage of secured mobile dominating sets for efficient optimized use of energy in a mobile ad hoc network. Existing approaches for energy optimization use different techniques. Some of them include techniques such as dominating sets, communication reduction between nodes and concept of balanced forces. Energy optimization in dominating set based approaches is carried out by the use of some special nodes, which are the only working nodes in the network. The dominating set based approach can be modified to improve network life by improving energy consumption per node. Further more these approaches do not provide security. In this thesis we propose the concept of mobile dominating set, which updates the dominating set nodes at regular intervals based on the nodes mobility and the network topology constraints. This further improves the network life by utilizing the maximum energy per node. Furthermore, we propose a secure dominating set mechanism, which provides security with minimum energy expenditure for mobile dominating sets. Our approach starts by constructing the dominating set based on the initial composition between two networks, security key network and mobile ad hoc network, and then depending on the nodes mobility, decrease in energy levels of dominating set nodes, network topology constraints; it recalculates the dominating set with new mobile network links to include secured communication between the dominating set nodes. The results are compared with unsecured dominating set networks, secured mobile ad hoc networks and general mobile ad hoc networks. The results show that the energy consumed for each network in increasing order as unsecured dominating set networks, secured dominating set networks, general mobile ad hoc networks and secured mobile ad hoc networks. It also shows that the narrow difference in energy levels for unsecured dominating set network and secured dominating set network decreases as the network size increases. It also shows that there is very small difference of average path lengths between secured dominating set network and unsecured dominating set network. The results also show that the number of nodes survived decreases as the network period increases with improved network life per each node.Computer Science Departmen
