An Energy-Efficient Dynamic Source Routing Protocol for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

The Dynamic Source Routing Protocol (DSR) is one of the most reliable and effective protocols in the Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs). It is also one of the few MANET protocols whose routing scheme can easily be optimized. But the routing overhead generated by its routing algorithm still leaves substantial amounts of energy being wasted. Route Request (RREQ) and Route Maintenance packets generate overhead control packets that occupy bandwidth, consume energy and may overwhelm a network if not controlled. This paper proposed EEDSR, an extension of DSR that reduces routing overhead by limiting the number of route discovery and maintenance packets in the MANET. The scheme involves bigger packet headers for the source route discovery packets since they contain information about the energy levels of the nodes in the route cache. In EEDSR, since the RREQ packets are flooded once for each communication period, routing overhead is minimized. General Terms: Routing Overhead, Dynamic Source Routing (DSR), Energy-Efficiency Additional Key Words and Phrases: Energy-Efficient Dynamic Source Routing (EEDSR), Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs), Power-aware, On-demand routing.