Adaptive Topology Control in Wireless Ad-hoc Networks

Seung-Jong Park and Raghupathy Sivakumar
GNAN Research Group
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology

MOBIHOC 2003, June 1-3, Annap olis, MD, USA


Abstract

Topology control in ad-hoc networks is the problem of adjusting the transmission power at network nodes in order to achieve the optimal topology that maximizes network performance. Recently, using effective topology control to optimize energy usage in the network has come into focus in the research community. The common thesis arrived at by existing works is that the transmission range used by mobile nodes should be the minimum required to keep the network connected. We refer to such a topology as the minimally connected topology in the rest of the paper. We argue in this work that the minimally connected topology does not always provide the optimal performance in typical ad-hoc networks. We show that in contrast, for typical ad-hoc networks with a few hundred nodes distributed over a few square miles area, the optimal topology is a function of the traffic load.


Poster Paper: [pdf (82KB)]