Maximum battery life routing to support ubiquitous mobile computing in wireless ad hoc networks

Most ad hoc mobile devices today operate on batteries. Hence, power consump tion becomes an important issue. To maximize the lifetime of ad hoc mobile networks, the power consumption rate of each node must be evenly distribute d, and the overall transmission power for each connection request must be m inimized. These two objectives cannot be satisfied simultaneously by employ ing routing algorithms proposed in previous work. In this article we presen t a new power-aware routing protocol to satisfy these two constraints simul taneously; we also compare the performance of different types of power-rela ted routing algorithms via simulation. Simulation results confirm the need to strike a balance in attaining service availability performance of the wh ole network vs. the lifetime of ad hoc mobile devices.