PARO: Supporting Dynamic Power Controlled Routing in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

This paper introduces PARO, a dynamic power controlled routing scheme that helps to minimize the transmission power needed to forward packets between wireless devices in ad hoc networks. Using PARO, one or more intermediate nodes called “redirectors” elects to forward packets on behalf of source–destination pairs thus reducing the aggregate transmission power consumed by wireless devices. PARO is applicable to a number of networking environments including wireless sensor networks, home networks and mobile ad hoc networks. In this paper, we present the detailed design of PARO and evaluate the protocol using simulation and experimentation. We show through simulation that PARO is capable of outperforming traditional broadcast-based routing protocols (e.g., MANET routing protocols) due to its energy conserving point-to-point on-demand design. We discuss our experiences from an implementation of the protocol in an experimental wireless testbed using off-the-shelf radio technology. We also evaluate the impact of dynamic power controlled routing on traditional network performance metrics such as end-to-end delay and throughput.