Route Discovery Protocol for Energy Efficient Networks With MIMO Links

We propose a reactive route discovery protocol for energy efficient transmission in a wireless multihop network with multiple input multiple output (MIMO) channels. We focus on networks consisting of MIMO nodes that use time division scheduling where the source needs to transmit a certain amount of data to the destination in a fixed amount of time. We show how the intermediate nodes find the route distributively. This protocol takes into account the quality of the MIMO channels and allocates power to them so that the end-to-end transmission energy is minimized. The resulting protocol is easy to implement and provides the most energy efficient route and the power allocation for the data transmission. We perform simulations on Rayleigh-fading channels to show the significant energy benefits of the proposed route discovery protocol against a dynamic source routing (DSR)-based routing protocol with optimal power allocation.