Evaluating transceiver power savings produced by connectivity strategies for infrastructure wireless mesh networks

Abstract

Infrastructure Wireless Mesh Networks (I-WMNs) are increasingly used to bridge the digital divide in rural areas around the world. Rural African areas in particular require energy efficient I-WMNs as the nodes comprising the I-WMN backbone network may be battery-powered in the absence of reliable power supplies. A key requirement for the proper functioning of the I-WMN backbone is that network connectivity be maintained. Two main types of connectivity strategies exist in the literature and the more practical Critical Number of Neighbors (CNN) method is focused upon. Three CNN-based connectivity strategies are evaluated via simulation to determine their effect on transceiver power savings when applied to the I-WMN backbone. The evaluation shows that these strategies are capable of cumulative transceiver power savings (in excess of 10%) and that the capacity for transceiver power savings largely corresponds to the position of a node relative to the (imaginary) network center. However, the evaluated connectivity strategies were found not to increase the network lifetime due to the nature of the network topologies created by these strategies. This particular result is however dependent upon the node energy model employed and further experiments with differing energy models are required to confirm this finding