A Novel Power Aware Heterogeneous Routing Protocol for MANETs

Devices in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have limited power resources and may be equipped with different transmission technologies. These characteristics make MANET traditional routing protocols inconvenient in a heterogeneous environment. In this paper, we propose a power aware routing protocol for a MANET formed of heterogeneous nodes. The proposed approach takes into consideration the battery status of nodes when building the routing table. It aims to avoid exhausting the nodes that are falling on optimal routes across the network; thus providing better connectivity and extending the network lifetime. We implemented the protocol as an extension to JiST/SWANS network simulator, and compared its performance to other heterogeneous and power aware routing protocols found in the literature.