Title:
Hierarchical Power Management in Disruption Tolerant Networks with Traffic-Aware Optimization

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Jun, Hyewon
Ammar, Mostafa H.
Corner, Mark D.
Zegura, Ellen W.
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Abstract
Disruption tolerant networks (DTNs) are wireless mobile networks that are characterized by frequent partitions and long delays. Such networks can be used in highly-challenged environment in which energy resources are limited. Efficient power management, therefore, is essential for their success. In this paper, we present a hierarchical power management in DTNs where nodes are equipped with two complementary radios: a long-range, high power radio and a short range, low-power radio. In this architecture, energy can be conserved by using the low-power radio to discover communication opportunities with other nodes and then wake up the high-power radio to undertake the data transmission. We develop a generalized power management framework and its variations around this idea and evaluate their relative performance. In addition, for the case in which traffic load can be predicted, we devise approximation algorithms to control the sleep/wake-up cycling to provide maximum energy conservation while discovering enough communication opportunities to handle a given traffic load. We evaluate our schemes and our choice of parameters through ns-2 simulations. Our simulation results show that the generalized power management mechanism could augment the usefulness of the low power radio and achieve better energy efficiency than mechanisms relying on one radio for discovery. In addition, our approximation algorithms reduce energy consumption from 73% to 93% compared with the case without power management. We also observe that while an additional low power radio does reduce the energy consumption needed for discovery, the improvement could be negligible in mobile DTNs due to the low density of nodes.
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Date Issued
2006
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Technical Report
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