Improving energy consumption in ad hoc networks through prioritization

Energy is a major concern in ad hoc networks as it dictates the lifetime of a terminal and consequently the whole network. In an ad hoc network, not all terminals are equally solicited : depending on their position, some serve as relay nodes more than others. In order to maximize the lifetime of the whole network, we propose in this work to give priority in accessing the medium to the ones with larger number of neighbors, as done in Reference [1] but for routing only. In doing so, not only do we save energy for hard working nodes, as energy is mostly used by the MAC access, but we also take advantage at most out of these central nodes before they move to other, less dense locations. As far as the MAC access is concerned, our results show up to 82% increase in the lifetime of the whole network.