Optimal Combination of Routing and Transmission Range Assignment in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

A wireless ad hoc network consists of a collection of wireless nodes with bounded energy that is capable communicating with each other reliably without the use of a network infrastructure or any centralized administration. Transmission range and power of nodes play a dominant role in energy consumption and range assignment, algorithms try to specify an optimal transmission range for nodes. Transmission range effects on network topology and the optimal route between nodes. Although routing and range assignment have been considered by researchers separately, there is a few highlights research about employing routing and range assignment jointly while this combination leads in improving network performance. In this paper, the combination of range assignment and routing problem is modeled as an optimization problem. Although, the mathematical formulation can help us to estimate the problem characteristic and figure out the firmness of it, solving this optimization problem is impossible and impractical in the large-scale wireless network. By utilizing sub-gradient and decomposition methods, a distributed algorithm is proposed where applied range assignment and routing problem jointly. Simulation results show that the distributed algorithm has more power consumption and delay with respect to optimal model but it provides more reliability for networks.