Power and Placement: Increasing Mobile Adhoc Network Capacity and Power Efficiency

There is great interest in using mobile adhoc networks (MANETs) for military and civilian applications. There are still a lot of interesting problems investigating the capacity and the optimal design of these networks. This paper looks at one of these outstanding problems. Specifically the problem addressed is to determine how the capacity of a MANET can be increased by the optimal placement of an additional dynamic node in a power efficient manner. This node is envisaged to be a platform whose primary purpose is to increase the capacity and power efficiency of the MANET. Given a specific network configuration the optimal location of an additional node is investigated. This node insertion is teamed with power adjustments of all the nodes carried out in a manner consistent with topology control. This approach is then compared to topology control methods not using an additional node. The simulations performed show that the technique described can significantly decrease the jamming experienced within a MANET, thereby increasing the network's capacity. Additional benefit is also observed in the power usage of the MANET falling, thereby increasing the operational lifetime of the network. From the results obtained it will be inferred that a simple distributed algorithm to find the optimal point is not a trivial exercise.