WEEP: weight based energy efficient priority scheduling of data packets in mobile ad-hoc networks

In order to build a mobile ad hoc network, only some battery powered nodes are required to be deployed; no additional infrastructure is necessary. Routing, scheduling etc. algorithms for this kind of networks have to be designed in such a manner that battery power in nodes can be saved, that is, algorithms should be energy efficient. In most cases, an external priority is assigned to data packets which we have to take care. Along with that, in WEEP, we consider residual lifetime of source and destination nodes to estimate whether the current packet can be sent to destination. Moreover, if possibility of completion of a communication session is less, then more weight is given to data packets belonging to those sessions. The present article aims at reducing the number of route discovery sessions through energy efficient scheduling policy. Therefore, packets travelling through paths consisting of delicate links, are blessed with more priority than those travelling through strong wireless links. Simulation results show that performance improvement produced by WEEP is very significant compared to other protocols used to scheduling in ad hoc networks. As far as the authors know, WEEP is a unique scheduling algorithm in ad hoc network that considers expected residual lifetime of destination along with performance and fragility of a path.