Abstract
The mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a collection of mobile nodes that can self-organize without a fixed infrastructure. Mobile nodes in MANET are powered by batteries with limited capacities. How to efficiently utilize the battery capacities is an important issue in mobile ad hoc networks. In this thesis, we concentrated on minimizing the energy consumption when nodes communicate with each other. We proposed a cross layer design between routing protocol and medium access control (MAC) protocol. During the route discovery, the routing protocol chooses the routing paths that consume less energy and avoid choosing the nodes with low battery capacities to relay packets. And, the mobile nodes adaptively decide the maximum transmit power they can use according to their remaining battery capacities. Furthermore, during the data transmission, the MAC protocol performs power control to increase link reliability and further reduce power consumption. The results of performance evaluation show that our proposed scheme can efficiently conserve energy and thus lengthen the system lifetime.