Design and analysis of PADSR protocol for routing in MANETs

A mobile ad hoc network is a collection of nodes with no pre-established infrastructure. As the network management functions are performed by the mobile nodes themselves, every node participating in the network is heavily burdened with transmissions and processing operations for the maintenance of the network, apart from its own intended ones for establishing/answering a call. Considering the limited processing ability, storage capacity and most importantly the available battery power of the nodes, it is required to minimize the transmission power and the amount of data transmitted, for efficient operation. This paper presents a power aware routing protocol aptly designed, implemented and tested for a mobile ad hoc network of small to medium size (10 to 100 nodes). The basic protocol is chosen as Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) considering its excellent performance in small to medium sized ad hoc networks. The DSR protocol is then enhanced with power awareness using the Location Aided Power Aware Routing (LAPAR) algorithm. The performance of DSR protocol and Power Aware DSR (PADSR) protocol are compared through simulation. It is seen that PADSR protocol out-performs DSR protocol by a power saving of as much as 30%.