Energy-Efficient Routing and Control Mechanisms for Wireless Ad . . .

This thesis contributes toward the design of new network layer protocols for emerging wireless ad hoc networks based on a foundation of variable-range transmission control. Wireless ad hoc networks represent autonomous distributed systems that are infrastructureless, fully distributed and multihop in nature. The thesis begins by investigating some fundamental tradeoffs and performance limits of wireless ad hoc networks based on common-range transmission control. We show how an alternative approach that uses variable-range transmission control can improve the overall performance of the wireless network. The advantage of using variable-range transmission control is twofold. First, it can reduce the overall transmission power in the network, therefore, increasing the energy savings of wireless devices that are typically energy limited. Second, it can increase the traffic carrying capacity of these wireless networks in comparison to existing systems that are based on common-range transmission control. More specifically, we study the impact of transmission power on the physical and network connectivity, network capacity, and power savings from a mathematica