A hybrid power-saving protocol by dual-channel and dual-transmission-range clustering for IEEE 802.11-based MANETs

There are two types of MAC layer power-saving (PS) protocols for IEEE 802.11-based MANETs: synchronous and asynchronous ones. In this paper, we propose a hybrid PS protocol to take advantages of both types of protocols. The protocol utilizes the concept of dual-channel and dual-transmission-range clustering. It divides all the hosts into clusters. Each cluster has a head and all the heads are organized as a virtual backbone to help route data. The protocol also utilizes the cluster head dismissal mechanism to avoid the ever-increasing of cluster heads and to adapt to topology changing. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed protocol is more power-efficient and more scalable than related protocols.