Green ICT: Energy Efficiency in a Motorway Model

Green ICT (Information and Communication Technology) is a new focus with the goal of saving energy by optimizing mobile network communications and ultimately protecting the natural climate [I]. Here we consider the design of vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) to reduce energy consumption due to communications. Based on a realistic transport traffic scenario on a motorway, "M4" in UK, this paper computes the energy consumption in a motorway ad-hoc wireless network. This is based on a Geographical Adaptive Fidelity (GAF) topology management protocol [2], where the energy consumption has been analysed for equal-grid, adjustable-grid and genetic algorithm models. Considering nodes in the VANET network and their transmission ranges, this paper provides a network model to compute the energy consumption of VANETs and compare their energy efficiency performance. As a result, the proposed genetic algorithm model has been found to be more energy efficient than the adjustable-grid model which is better than the equal-grid model.