Energy-Efficient Data Multicast in Multi-Hop Wireless Networks

Abstract

Multi-hop wireless networks (MHWNs) are an emerging paradigm for bandwidth and energy-efficient wireless systems where each terminal communicates only with a few closely positioned neighbour nodes using low power communication schemes. High-rate (multimedia) data networks, sensor networks, and voice communications are seen as three main application domains of MHWNs. While MHWNs open many new research and economic opportunities, they simultaneously pose a number of new challenging technical problems. Among them, the fundamental role is reserved for energy- efficient data delivery. We address the problem of Data Multicast in Multi-Hop Wireless Networks that effectively captures requirements of all three of the scenarios. The problem focuses on how to minimize energy consumption while delivering data to all consumers that requested it. Since in the current and pending technologies communication dominates energy consumption, we aim to minimize the number of nodes that transmit data for the request data delivery problem instance. First, we formulate the problem and establish its computation complexity. Next, we develop an efficient heuristic which utilizes information about the geographical position of the nodes in the network to find the most energy-efficient communication path. Finally, we establish the effectiveness of the proposed approach by conducting comprehensive testing of our heuristic on typical ad-hoc networks and instances.