A Packet Distribution Method for Energy Balancing on Node-Disjoint Multipath of MANETs

MANET is a collection of two or more mobile devices equipped with wireless communications and networking capability. The mobile nodes have good portability and flexibility, but they also have energy limitation. If the energy consumption of nodes can not be balanced efficiently through the network, some nodes will be out of commission too early because of running out of energy, which breaks the path and communication. For energy balancing of the entire network, we propose a packet distribution method based on four energy collection criteria; Static-Average, Static-Minimum, Dynamic-Average and Dynamic-Minimum on node-disjoint multipaths between a source and a destination. By adopting the methods, we attempt to achieve the optimal energy balance of the network. The performance of packet distribution methods by the four criteria on the node-disjoint multipath and that of AODV are evaluated by NS2 simulation. The research result proves that Dynamic-Minimum is the best one to accomplish the energy balance of the network.