An adaptive quorum-based energy conserving protocol for IEEE 802.11 ad hoc networks

The lifetime of a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) depends on the durability of the mobile hosts' battery resources. In the IEEE 802.11 Power Saving Mode, a host must wake up at every beacon interval, to check if it should remain awake. Such a scheme fails to adjust a host's sleep duration according to its traffic, thereby reducing its power efficiency. This paper presents new MAC protocols for power saving in a single hop MANET. The essence of these protocols is a quorum-based sleep/wake-up mechanism, which conserves energy by allowing the host to sleep for more than one beacon interval, if few transmissions are involved. The proposed protocols are simple and energy-efficiency. Simulation results showed that our protocols conserved more energy and extended the lifetime of a MANET.