Distributed and power efficient routing in wireless cooperative networks

Most ad hoc mobile devices in wireless networks operate on batteries and power consumption is therefore an important issue for wireless network design. In this paper, we propose and investigate a new distributed cooperative routing algorithm that realizes minimum power transmission for each composed cooperative link, given the link BER (Bit Error Rate) constrained at a certain target level. The key contribution of the proposed scheme is to bring the performance gain of cooperative diversity from the physical layer up to the networking layer. Specifically, the proposed algorithm selects the best relays with minimum power consumption in distributed manner, and then forms cooperative links for establishing a route with appropriate error performance from a source to a destination node. Analytical results are developed to show that our cooperative transmission strategy (MPSDF) achieves average energy saving of 82.43% compared to direct transmission, and of 21.22% compared to the existing minimum power cooperation strategy. Furthermore, the proposed power efficient routing algorithm can also reduce the total power consumption by a couple dB compared to existing cooperative routing algorithms. Monte-Carlo simulation results are also provided for performance evaluation.