GAER: genetic algorithm-based energy-efficient routing protocol for infrastructure-less opportunistic networks

In infrastructure-less opportunistic networks (Oppnets), the routing of messages is a challenging task since nodes are not aware of the network topology and they look for an opportunity to send the message by finding or predicting a best temporary path at each hop towards the destination. As nodes perform various computations for next hop selection, a lot of battery power gets consumed, which in turn reduces the network lifetime. Thus, there is a clear demand for routing protocols for such networks which are energy-efficient and consume lesser power of nodes in forwarding a message. In this paper, a novel routing protocol named genetic algorithm-based energy-efficient routing (GAER) protocol for infrastructure-less Oppnets is proposed. This protocol uses a node's personal information, and then applies the genetic algorithm (GA) to select a better next hop among a group of neighbour nodes for the message to be routed to the destination. With the application of GA, optimal results are obtained that help in the selection of the best possible node as the next hop, which in turn, leads to prolonged battery life. Simulation results show that GAER outperforms the Epidemic, PROPHET, and Spray and Wait protocols in terms of messages delivered, overhead ratio, average residual energy, and number of dead nodes. The results obtained for average latency and average buffer time using GAER are comparable to those obtained for the aforementioned protocols.