EABPF: Efficient Algorithm to Overcome Battery Power Failures in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Wireless mobile devices such as high-end cell phones, PDAs, portable gaming devices, tablet PCs etc. all having wireless networking capabilities have a tremendous increase in recent years. These devices when used in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) may extend their capabilities, e.g., to reach the Internet when no Wi-Fi base stations are within range, or to have communication with each other over multiple hops when no other networking infrastructure is provided. Major problem of continuous participation in a MANET is energy consumption which is the main characteristic of MANETs. Wireless devices mentioned are battery powered and since energy is a rare resource and the devices are mobile, optimization of energy consumption in MANETs has greater impact as it directly corresponds to lifetime of networks. In cooperative MANETs, data replication is done on different mobile devices in order to improve system‟s availability. A master node is assigned to act as a coordinator for the data copies that are shared among the mobile nodes. When this master node failure occurs, another node has to be elected to replace the failed one. Since mobile devices have a limited battery power, the master node may fail at any time. Moreover, current master node election protocols in MANETs employ a notable wireless communication overhead which consumes a considerable amount of battery power. An Efficient algorithm to overcome battery power failures in MANETs(EABPF) is proposed to replace the exhausted master node before its battery dies with a healthy node with much less communication overhead thus overcoming the battery power failures in MANETs .