Energy-aware and stable cluster-based multipath routing protocol for wireless ad hoc networks

Ad hoc networks are wireless networks that can operate without infrastructure and without centralised network management; they may contain nodes with limited battery power. Hence, energy conservation is a critical requirement in the design of routing protocols for ad hoc networks. Clustering has been proposed as a promising method for simplifying the routing process in mobile ad hoc networks when network size increases. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient multipath routing protocol, called energy aware and stable cluster-based multipath routing (ES-CMR protocol), which preserves the residual energy of nodes and increases the network lifetime. To achieve this goal, we use an objective model to select energy-efficient paths with stable links. The simulation results demonstrate that ES-CMR has better performance in terms of energy consumption, network lifetime and end-to-end delay.