Buffering technique for optimizing energy consumption in the transmission of multimedia traffic in Ad-Hoc networks

Energy constraints on wireless nodes represent a current field of research. Such restrictions are particularly significant because of the great amount of features and applications currently available on devices, which contribute to dramatically increase energy consumption. However, when transmitting delay-sensitive data, such as multimedia streaming, a balance between energy optimization and quality of service is required. In this sense, there are many works that address this issue from different layers of network architecture separately; however, a more efficient solution could be achieved by combining the management capabilities of the different layers and the joint use of such information, which is called a cross-layer mechanism. Moreover, despite the fact that the IEEE 802.11 standard defines an energy management mechanism at MAC level, it is envisaged only for structured networks, leaving just general guidelines for other kind of networks, such as Ad-Hoc networks. Therefore, as a first step towards the design of a cross-layer scheme, this paper analyzes the flaws of IEEE 802.11 standard as regards the infrastructureless mode and proposes an optimization mechanism for energy management in Ad-Hoc networks. The proposed approach is based on a buffering mechanism, which is able to increase power-saving periods of time in Ad-Hoc nodes. Simulations using NS3 indicate that it is possible to obtain higher levels of residual energy at the end of a transmission using the proposed scheme.