Simulation and Evaluation of Unsynchronized Power Saving Mechanisms in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Power saving mechanisms in wireless ad hoc network nodes mainly switch off the transmission and reception hardware for a maximal amount of time and turn it on again within a given interval. Many approaches aim to synchronize the state changes of the nodes in the network through distributed beacon generation and introduce mechanisms where nodes synchronously wake up at designated points of time to exchange announcements about pending traffic. Synchronization however is difficult to achieve, in particular in ad hoc networks. This paper describes the simulation, evaluation and refinement of a recently proposed power saving approach based on asynchronous wake-up patterns and wake-up announcements integrated with AODV. We show that significant improvements of the connectivity under low wake ratios can be achieved by carefully designed forwarding strategies of AODV route request messages.